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Division    BS  llhO 

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The  Failure  of  the  "Higher  Criticism" 
of  the  Bible 


The 

Failure  of  the  "Higher  Criticism" 

of  the  Bible 


BY 

EMIL   HEICH, 

Doctor  Juris 

Author  of  "  Gr-«co-Koman  Institutions,"  "Atlas  of 
English  History,"    "  Select   Docttments  Illus- 
trating Medi-eval  and  Modern  History," 
"Imperialism,"    "Success    Among 
x"fATiONS,"  "General  History," 
Etc.,  Etc. 


CINCINNATI:  JENNINGS  AND  GRAHAM 
NEW  YORK:    EATON  AND  MAINS 


ooptright,  1905,  bt 
Jennings  and  Gkaham 


PREFACE. 

Of  the  five  chapters  of  the  present  work,  the 
first  two  chapters  appeared  in  the  Contem- 
porary Review  for  February  and  April,  1905. 
The  other  three  chapters  form  the  substance  of 
various  lectures  given  by  the  author  in  Lon- 
don, at  Edinburgh,  and  elsewhere.  All  the  five 
chapters  are  results  of  an  historic  examination 
of  the  claims  of  '"Higher  Criticism,"  com- 
menced many  years  ago.  The  author  is  not  a 
clergyman,  and  has  no  intention  whatever  to 
become  one.  He  means  to  serve  the  ends  of  no 
ecclesiastic  party.  He  searches  for  nothing  but 
Truth.  Many  years  ago  he  fully  believed  in 
the  "scientific  character"  of  Higher  Criticism; 
but  having  learned  more  about  Life  and  Reality 
by  means  of  extensive  travels  and  varied  ex- 
perience, he  has  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
Higher  Criticism  is  bankrupt  as  a  method  of 
research,  and  pernicious  as  a  teaching  of  re- 
5 


6  Preface. 

ligious  truth.  It  is  a  perversion  of  History, 
and  a  desecration  of  Religion.  May  this  little 
book  help  unprejudiced  minds  to  gain  a  truer 
and  more  reverential  conception  of  the  Holy 
Book  of  Mankind.  It  is  intended  not  only  to 
destroy  the  "scientific"  spell  of  "Higher  Criti- 
cism," but  also  to  construct  the  right  method  of 
comprehending  the  Bible. 

EMIL  REICH. 

London,  August  6,  1905. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 


Pa&k 


Introduction.      The   Argument  from 

THE  Masai  Legends,       .        -        -  9 

CHAPTER  II 
The    Argument   from   the    Border 

Nations, 41 

CHAPTER  III 

The  Argument  from  the  Method, 

The  Inquisitorial  Principle,        -  81 

CHAPTER  IV 

The  Argument  from  the  Theory  of 
Names,  of  the  Foreigner,  and  of 
Myths, 127 

CHAPTER  V 

The    Argument    from    the    Prophets 

AND  the  Theory  of  Personality,         171 


CHAPTER  I. 
The  Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

The  Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends. 

Despite  all  the  great  debt  which  we  owe  to 
the  Renaissance,  we  must  admit  that  it  has 
foisted  one  great  incubus  upon  us,  and  that  is, 
the  blind  admiration  of  words.  The  Renais- 
sance was  undoubtedly  due  in  very  great  meas- 
ure to  the  humanists,  and  it  was  their  superior 
knowledge  of  Greek  and  Latin  which  at  all 
events  aided  in  bringing  about  the  vast  change 
which  at  that  time  came  over  the  whole  mental 
life  of  Europe.  What  the  Renaissance  would 
have  been  without  Greek,  I  do  not  intend  here 
to  debate.  It  would  probably  have  been  irrep- 
arably crippled,  and  Europe  would  perhaps 
never  have  succeeded  in  its  present  career  had 
it  not  been  able  to  walk  in  the  footsteps  of 
Greece.  All  that  I  would  here  say  is  that  the 
reverence  which  has  been  paid  to  the  mere  ex- 
ternals of  humanism  has  been  greatly  exag- 
gerated. The  words,  which  were  the  mere  in- 
11 


12      The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

strmnents  through  which  the  new  inspiration 
was  conveyed,  have  been  worshiped  as  much  as, 
if  not  more  than,  the  inspiration  itself.  The 
dicta  of  the  philologist,  without  any  further 
qualification,  have  been  accepted  with  even 
greater  admiration  and  adulation  than  have  the 
great  words  of  the  great  pioneers  of  human 
thought. 

Who  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies were  the  great  receivers  of  rewards  ?  Not 
Copernicus,  not  the  incomparable  Kepler,  not 
Descartes,  not  Giordano  Bruno,  not  Spinoza, 
persecuted  by  every  synod  of  the  Seven  Prov- 
inces, denied  by  father,  mother,  sister,  and  dy- 
ing as  an  outcast  pariah,  when  still  in  the  hey- 
day of  manhood.  But  Scaliger,  who,  admirable 
as  may  be  his  philological  aKptjiua,  can  not 
claim  to  have  advanced  humanity,  was  invited 
to  the  newly-founded  University  of  Leyden ;  he 
was  appointed  professor  at  a  handsome  salary; 
no  obligation  was  required  of  him  in  return ; 
he  was  not  to  lecture  unless  he  graciously  felt 
so  disposed ;  his  mere  presence  was  deemed  to 
shed  luster  enough  upon  the  great  Dutch  Uni- 
versity. Compare  the  position  of  poor  Pascal 
in  Prance  with  that  of  Casaubon,  king  of  com- 
mentators, adulated  by  Henry  IV,  perhaps  the 
greatest    monarch    of    Prance,    who    tried    to 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       13 

wheedle  and  coax  him.  into  Catholicism,  who 
patted  him  literally  on  the  cheek  and  meta- 
phorically on  the  back;  thinking,  as  the  King 
did,  that  if  Casaubon,  whom  the  world  regarded 
as  the  mirror  of  all  wisdom,  could  be  gained  as 
a  convert.  Protestantism  in  France  might  be 
extinguished  much  more  easily.  And  when 
Casaubon  was  weary  of  France,  was  there  not 
a  warm  welcome  for  him  in  England  ?  James 
I,  who  could  never  see  what  he  had  in  Bacon, 
was  too  delighted  to  have  a  Casaubon  and  to 
pay  him  well  for  the  interchange  of  philological 
gabble.  Meanwhile  James  left  Shakespeare 
without  recognition,  so  that  to-day,  there  be- 
ing little  known  about  the  great  poet.  Shaken 
speare  bids  fair  to  be  treated  as  a  myth  by 
latter-day  historians.  Why  should  we  speak  of 
Bentley,  whose  acute  scholarship,  expended  in 
ingenious  emendations  of  Horace,  won  him 
honor  and  renown,  although  to-day,  as  we  are 
told  by  M.  Salomon  Reinach,  out  of  his  hun- 
dreds of  emendations  of  Horace  only  half-a- 
dozen  meet  with  the  acceptance  of  scholars? 
Heyne,  the  great  critic  of  texts,  was  made  an 
oracle  and  listened  to  with  awe  by  the  whole  of 
Europe,  was  envied  by  Goethe,  who  burned  to 
become  a  Heyne  II,  whereas  Leesing  was  left 
to  languish  in  obscurity  on  the  miserable  pit- 


14     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

tance  of  an  eighteenth-century  librarian.  But 
the  Laohoon  will  live  forever,  while  the  hair- 
splitting textual  refinements  of  Hejne  are 
mostly  long  discredited  and  forgotten.  But  in 
the  nineteenth  century  the  worship  of  the 
philologists  became  even  more  exaggerated.  If 
they  did  not  find  themselves  placed  invariably 
in  high  political  positions,  like  Wilhelm  von 
Humboldt,  they  were,  at  all  events,  allowed  to 
assume  undisputed  dictatorship  in  everything 
pertaining  to  antiquity.  Without  any  other 
recommendation  save  a  linguistic  smattering, 
they  were  permitted  to  lay  down  the  law  even 
on  Roman  legislation,  and  to  impose  their  ideas 
or  lack  of  ideas  concerning  ancient  art,  history, 
and  religion.  How  many  of  those  bold  philolo- 
gists has  the  last  century  seen,  who  have  em- 
barked in  the  nutshell  of  a  word  and  set  forth 
merrily  to  explore,  like  retrospective  Colum- 
buses,  the  ocean  of  the  prehistoric  past !  That 
so  many  of  them  have  undergone  shipwreck  is 
no  matter  for  excessive  lamentation.  For  a 
long  time  the  unsolved  enigmas  of  hieroglyph 
and  cuneiform  preserved  us  from  the  nightmare 
of  ancient  Oriental  philology.  The  discovery 
of  that  unfortunate  Rosetta  stone,  seeing  all  the 
philological  misery  that  it  has  entailed,  can 
hardly  be  viewed  as  an  unmitigated  blessing  to 


Argument  froTTi  the  Masai  Legends.       15 

mankind.  Still  more  doubtful  is  our  gratitude 
towards  Grotefend  and  other  ingenious  con- 
trivers who  have  enabled  us  to  decipher  Assy- 
rian and  Babylonian  tablets.  Hitherto  the  rav- 
ings of  philologists  had  been  comparatively 
harmless.  They  had  been  compelled  to  limit 
themselves  to  the  demolition  of  the  classics. 
Out  of  a  missing  digamma  they  were  able,  first, 
to  rob  Homer  of  his  character,  to  pillory  him 
as  an  impudent  plunderer  of  other  men's  wits, 
and  finally  to  prove  most  conclusively  that,  with 
or  without  character,  he  never  existed  at  all. 
But,  after  all,  this  was  a  more  or  less  innocuous 
amusement.  It  was  no  doubt  a  pity  to  see  the 
figure-head  of  Greek  and  Roman  history  robbed 
of  all  credit,  and  turned  into  mere  mythical 
figments  of  the  primitive  brain. 

But  to  this  we  might  have  been  reconciled. 
To-day,  however,  the  philologists  have  pushed 
forward  their  linguistic  parallels  against  far 
more  serious  objects.  They  are  seeking  to  bat- 
ter down  the  foundations  of  all  that  we  believe 
and  hold  most  in  reverence.  They  have  dis- 
turbed the  minds  and  troubled  the  consciences 
of  thousands  of  people  who  have  been  too  sim- 
ple to  grasp  the  absolute  emptiness  of  the 
philologists'  methods  in  history.  But  assuredly 
the  world  lacks  a  sense  of  humor     How  comes 


1 6      The  Fmlure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

it  that  it  does  not  see  the  incougruity  of  allow- 
ing itself  to  be  lectured  upon  ancient  history, 
upon  the  origin  of  religions,  and  upon  subjects 
even  more  sacred,  by  some  little  German  phi- 
lological pedant  in  some  obscure  German  town  ? 
How  comes  it  that  there  is  so  little  inquiry  into 
his  qualifications?  ^Vhy,  because  by  dint  of 
plodding  insistence  he  has  succeeded  in  spelling 
out  some  obscure  Himiaritic  inscription  and  in 
fitting  it  with  some  hypothetical  meaning, 
should  he  be  considered  a  luminous  exponent  of 
ancient  history?  On  the  same  grounds  we 
might  admit  any  little  schoolteacher  of  French 
or  German  as  a  capable  historian  of  France  or 
Germany.  Here  the  absurdity  strikes  one  at 
once.  Why  in  the  case  of  ancient  history 
should  it  be  less  apparent  ?  The  man  who  is  in- 
capable of  appreciating  contemporary  history  is 
not  likely  to  make  any  startling  discovery  in 
ancient  history.  Historical  events  at  all  times 
have  been  made  by  the  human  heart,  by  hiunan 
passions,  by  the  clash  of  will  upon  will,  by 
personality.  If  we  are  unable  to  grasp  the  ac- 
tion of  these  elements  to-day,  when  the  process 
is  going  on  under  our  very  eyes,  how  shall  we 
discover  them  in  their  obscure  lurking-places  in 
inscriptions  and  papyrus,  where  they  are  as 
often  as  not  willfully  disguised?      For  those 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       17 

makers  of  history  who  have  left  records  have 
seldom  done  so  with  the  disinterested  motive  of 
informing  posterity  of  the  truth.  If  we  are  to 
interpret  those  records  to  any  account,  we  must 
first  have  studied  men  in  the  living  generation ; 
we  must  know  something  of  actual  politics  and 
their  motives;  we  must  have  rubbed  shoulders 
with  many  nations,  felt  their  ambitions,  and 
learned  to  know  their  men  and  women.  Finally 
we  may  light  upon  some  illuminating  analogy 
which  will  enable  us  to  see  clearly  into  the  dim 
records  of  the  past. 

There  is  certainly  no  single  German  pro- 
fessor of  ancient  history  who  can  claim  to  have 
undergone  such  a  training.  But,  necessary  as 
it  is  to  the  advancement  of  truth,  a  preparation 
of  the  kind  is  not  essential  to  his  own  advance- 
ment. Life  in  these  dreamy  university  towns 
has  little  of  the  savor  of  reality.  The  professor 
is  generally  yet  further  isolated  from  reality. 
His  training  in  ancient  languages  has  cast  his 
mind  in  a  mold  little  suited  to  historical  in- 
vestigation. It  is  quite  true  that  in  linguistics 
the  phenomena  are  of  a  slow  and  natural 
growth :  doubtless,  syntactical  contrivances  such 
as  the  ablative  absolute  have  been  produced  by 
gradual  evolution.  No  man  has  created  a  con- 
struction like  this  de  toutes  pieces.  But  in  his- 
2 


18      The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

torj  it  is  far  otherwise.  We  can  not  there  ap- 
ply methods  of  philology.  Yet  .this  is  what  has 
been  done,  and  what  characterizes  almost  every 
work  on  ancient  history  for  the  last  seventy 
years. 

The  results  have  been  disastrous.  The  phi- 
lologist w4io  in  all  his  days  has  never  seen  a 
personality,  can  not  bring  himself  to  believe  that 
institutions  like  the  Spartan  State  are  of  the 
making  of  a  single  man.  Thus  Lycurgus  has 
been  dissolved  into  a  myth.  Theseus  and  Romu- 
lus have  sui*vived  through  more  than  five-and- 
twenty  centuries,  only  to  be  ruthlessly  mur- 
dered by  a  pack  of  philologists ;  and  now,  not 
satisfied  with  these  crimes,  they  are  moving  for- 
ward to  attack  yet  greater  and  more  sacred 
personalities,  those  of  Moses  and  even  of  Jesus 
Himself.  We  can  not  well  be  angry  with  the 
perpetrators  of  these  deeds.  They  have  used 
what  means  they  had  ready  to  hand.  They 
have  availed  themselves  of  a  weakness  common 
to  all  mankind.  They  have  made  up  for  their 
ignorance  and  insufiiciency  by  incantations  of 
high-sounding  names.  Some  of  the  latest  sam- 
ples of  philological  jugglery  with  which  the 
public  has  been  duped  are  too  amusing  to  be 
omitted.  If  only  read  from  the  humorous 
standpoint,  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  book 
could  afford  a  merrier  half-hour  than  one  of 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       1 9 

the  latest  achievements  of  Professor  Hugo 
Winckler — two  volumes  in  which  he  finally  dis- 
solves into  myth  the  small  portion  of  Jewish 
history  which  had  been  mercifully  left  to  us. 
Listen  awhile,  and  you  shall  hear  how  Jewish 
tradition  is  a  mere  flimsy  plagiarism  of  Baby- 
lonian myths.  Among  the  general  massacre  of 
Biblical  personalities  we  can  only  mention  a 
few  of  the  victims.  What  person  has  hitherto 
been  more  historical  than  Joseph  ?  But  to  Pro- 
fessor Winckler  he  is  an  obvious  astral  myth, 
for  in  the  forty-third  chapter  of  Genesis,  verse 
25,  does  he  not  come  at  noon  ?  And  is  not  this 
clear  enough  proof  that  he  is  a  mere  personifi- 
cation of  the  sun  ?  Besides,  if  we  are  disposed 
to  doubt,  we  must  recollect  that  Joseph  dreamed 
that  the  sun,  moon,  and  eleven  stars  bowed 
dowm  to  him;  and  whom  should  they  bow  to 
save  the  sun  ?  Joshua,  too,  is  the  sun.  Por  he 
is  the  son  of  Xun,  and  does  not  J^iin,  being  in- 
terpreted, mean  fish  ?  and  does  not  the  sun  at 
the  spring  equinox  issue  from  the  constellation 
of  Pisces  ?  What  could  be  more  conclusive  ? 
Besides,  does  it  not  amply  explain  why  Joshua's 
companion  is  Caleb  ?  Now,  Caleb  is  Kaleb, 
and  Kaleb  is  Kelb,  and  Kelb  is  a  dog.  So,  of 
course,  Caleb  is  clearly  put  for  the  dog-star 
Sirius. 


20     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

This  is  indeed  philology  run  mad.  But  so 
seriously  is  it  taken  in  scientific  circles  that 
Jensen,  another  Assyriologist  of  highest  repute, 
thought  it  necessary  to  raise  his  mighty  voice 
in  the  Berliner  Philologische  Wocliensclirift, 
and  to  thunder  confutation  against  the  Winck- 
lerian  utterances.  But  in  the  midst  of  his 
thunder  Jensen  suddenly  realizes  the  hideous 
crime  he  is  about  to  perpetrate  in  demolishing 
Winckler.  He  evidently  grasps  that  he  is  tell- 
ing tales  out  of  school,  and  with  due  contrition 
sets  about  giving  us  even  more  startling  hy- 
potheses. He  discovers  that  Biblical  history  is 
a  mere  perversion  of  Ghalda^an  legends,  just  as 
was  the  Odyssey  of  Homer.  He  finds  the  story 
of  the  two  Chaldsean  Dioscures,  Gilgamish  and 
Ebani,  running  through  the  whole  thing.  Gil- 
gamish is  of  course  hidden  under  various  names. 
He  is  in  turn  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob,  Simeon, 
Joseph,  Moses,  Joshua,  and  Saul.  Then  evi- 
dence is  adduced  in  proof.  Did  not  Gilgamish 
slay  the  heavenly  bull?  So  did  Moses  destroy 
the  golden  calf.  Israel  was  vexed  in  the  desert 
■»  by  scorpions,  but  so  was  Gilgamish.  As  for  the 
trek  of  Israel  into  the  Promised  Land,  all  stuff 
and  nonsense.  That  is  merely  the  land  of  the 
blessed  which  Gilgamish  went  to  visit,  and 
which  Homer  filched  to  put  it  in  the  Odyssey 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       21 

as  the  island  of  the  Phseacians.     How  delight- 
fully simple  it  all  becomes ! 

Yet  the  philological  school  of  historians  have 
met  with  astounding  success.  The  effect  they 
have  had  on  the  public  has  been  enormous.  They 
have  had  in  their  favor  all  the  paraphernalia 
of  erudition,  eminently  imposing  to  the  naive 
public.  The  admiration  which  the  every-day 
man  has  for  the  knowledge  of  languages  is  a 
curious  psychological  problem.  There  is  prob- 
ably no  talent  which  secures  for  its  fortunate 
possessors  such  inordinate  prestige.  The  more 
unknown  the  language  is  to  the  hearer,  the  more 
profound  are  the  depths  of  wisdom  for  which 
the  speaker  secures  credit.  What  wonder  that 
when  the  learned  historian  is  able  to  cram  his 
footnotes  with  portentous  vocables  gleaned  from 
Assyrian  tablets,  or  copied  from  hieroglyphic 
steles,  that  his  reader  casts  up  his  hands  in 
ecstasy  and  marvels  at  the  profundity  of  the 
man.  Herein  we  have  the  secret  of  that  won- 
drous success  of  the  astral  myth,  which  permits 
the  would-be  historian  to  drag  into  his  service 
all  the  ponderous  lore  of  Babylonian  and  later 
constellations  and  zodiac;  which  allows  him  to 
sit  comfortably  ensconced  in  his  professional 
chair,  to  pull  down  volume  after  volume  of  long- 
forgotten  wisdom,  and  to  demolish  national,  re- 


22      The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

ligious,  and  other  historians,  without  once  com- 
ing into  rough  <pntact  with  the  realities  of  life 
and  passion.  This  method  certainly  offers  the 
most  abundant  advantages.  By  a  certain  knack 
of  erudition  and  with  a  minimum  of  thought 
it  is  possible  for  the  most  mediocre  genius  to 
pile  up  a  volume  upon  practically  any  given  sub- 
ject. All  that  one  wonders  is,  where  will  the 
process  end  ?  It  is  really  surprising  that  any 
of  the  great  personalities  of  history  have  been 
left  intact.  Why  have  the  philologists  not  yet 
sought  to  undenuine  Mahomet  ?  Surely  it  could 
not  be  so  very  difficult  to  prove  that  he,  too,  is 
but  another  alias  of  the  sun  ?  But  his  day  wall 
come,  and  the  day  of  the  historians  will  also 
come.  In  a  thousand  y^ears,  perhaps  far  sooner, 
one  will  arise  who,  b}  the  most  grundlich  phil- 
ological refining  upoiv  the  name  of  Professor 
Winckler,  will  find  that  he  too  is  a  mere  mas- 
querader  in  the  dress  of  the  sun,  that  he  is  an 
astral  myth,  a  clear  plagiarism  taken  from  some 
Babylonian  baked-clay  record. 

Why  has  the  school  of  Higher  Criticism  hith- 
erto met  with  no  really  serious  opponents  ?  The 
question  is  after  all  not  so  very  difficult  to 
answer.  The  works  of  the  Higher  Critics  abound 
in  erudition,  and  to  refute  them  by  exposing  the 
nullity  of  their  evidence  all  along  the  line  would 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       23 

entail  an  amount  of  barren  labor  which  serious 
thinkers  scarcely  care  to  undertake.  The  com- 
plete wrongheadedness  of  the  whole  method  of 
Higher  Criticism  can  not  fail  to  be  manifest  to 
anybody  who  bases  his  judgments  upon  the  true 
essence  of  the  matter  in  dispute,  and  not  upon 
mere  externals.  With  this  clear  knowledge  of 
the  futility  of  the  arguments  of  Higher  Criti- 
cism, those  who  have  been  wise  enough  to  see 
through  its  specious  array  of  evidence  remained 
contented  with  their  wisdom.  They  have  not 
thought  it  worth  their  while  to  enter  upon  a 
laborious  point-to-point  refutation,  which,  as  it 
would  never  interest  the  general  public,  who 
are  interested  only  in  broad  results,  would  in- 
evitably prove  ineffectual. 

The  fault  of  the  Higher  Critics  lies  in  an 
utter  misconception  of  the  matter  at  issue.  They 
imagine,  because  they  have  been  able  to  trace 
similarities,  or  even  identities,  between  the 
purely  external  phenomena  of  Judaism  or  of 
Christianity  and  the  religious  ceremonials  of 
ancient  Babylonia,  that  they  have  thereby 
proved  that  Christianity  and  Judaism  are  noth- 
ing but  cribs  of  what  the  Babylonians  long  be- 
fore possessed.  Many  of  the  Higher  Critics  upon 
the  strength  of  such  evidence  have  even  gone  so 
far  as  to  deny  the  existence  of  Israelitic  history 


24     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism,. 

at  all.  Such,  in  fact,  are  the  precise  words  used 
by  Professor  Winckler  in  a  letter  to  the  pres- 
ent writer.  Many  readers  will  remember  the 
violent  effect  produced  in  the  "seventies"  of  the 
last  century  by  the  appearance  of  "Supernatural 
Religion,"  three  thick  volumes  which  have  done 
more  to  upset  people's  consciences  than  has  any- 
thing else  during  the  last  hundred  years.  It 
embodies  precisely  the  futile  methods  to  which 
we  have  above  referred,  and  its  subversive  force 
has  been  little  impaired  by  such  rejoinders  as 
those  of  Sandys  and  Lightfoot. 

Within  the  last  few  weeks  matter  has  been 
published  which  should  finally  turn  the  Higher 
Critics  out  of  the  position  in  which  they  have 
been  so  long  comfortably  intrenched.  If  we  can 
show  a  people  living  in  a  region  of  the  world 
where  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  they 
can  ever  have  come  into  contact  with  Babylon- 
ianism  or  even  with  Judaism ;  if  we  can  demon- 
strate that  these  people  possess  precisely  the 
same  tradition  which  we  have  read  in  the  Old 
Testament  and  which  we  were  glad  to  suppose 
was  Jewish,  until  Professor  Delitzsch  and  his 
followers  tried  to  show  it  to  have  been  pur- 
loined from  Babylon ;  if  we  show  all  this,  shall 
we  not  have  made  it  clear  even  to  the  man  in 
the  street  that  there  is  something  radically  false 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       25 

in  the  methods  of  argiimeiit  used  by  the  Higher 
Critics  ?  For,  by  the  same  line  of  argument  by 
which  they  have  led  us  to  believe  that  the  whole 
fabric  of  Judaism  is  an  impudent  theft  from 
Babylon,  we  can  equally  well  prove  that  Juda- 
ism must  have  been  stolen  from  an  obscure  tribe 
of  East  African  negroes. 

Such  a  nation  are  the  Masai,  a  negro  tribe 
in  German  East  Africa.  Our  information  we  owe 
to  a  German  officer  stationed  in  German  East 
Africa,  whose  carefully  collected  evidence  it  is 
impossible  to  doubt.  Captain  Merker  has  spent 
some  eight  years  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mt. 
Kilimanjaro,  and  his  leisure  time  has  been  de- 
voted to  the  gathering  together  of  most  inter- 
esting ethnological  data,  which  he  has  published 
in  an  elaborate  monograph  printed  with  the 
support  of  the  German  Kolonialgesellschaft. 

It  is  good  to  hear  of  the  scrupulous  care  with 
which  Captain  Merker  has  endeavored  to  avoid 
any  kind  of  bias  in  getting  together  his  records. 
He  was  early  conscious  of  the  remarkable  coin- 
cidences between  many  of  the  native  traditions 
and  those  which  we  find  in  Genesis.  Such  a 
discovery  might  have  thro^vn  a  less  conscien- 
tious and  circumspect  investigator  oft  his  guard. 
He  might  very  well  have  used  precipitate  haste 
in  following  up  his  evidence.     To  begin  with, 


26      The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

it  was  no  easy  task  to  win  sufficiently  the  con- 
fidence of  the  natives,  who  seemed  to  be  ex- 
ceedingly reticent  about  their  traditions.  It 
was  only  with  infinite  trouble  that  they  could 
be  brought  to  talk  at  all  upon  the  subject.  But 
even  when  Captain  Merker  had  sufficiently  in- 
gratiated himself  with  them  to  obtain  their  con- 
fidence, he  studiously  avoided  putting  any  ques- 
tions. He  was  anxious  in  no  way  to  suggest  or 
bias  the  answers,  and  he  therefore  waited  pa- 
tiently until  the  natives  came  of  their  own  free 
will  to  him.  In  taking  down  their  records,  he 
observed  the  same  scrupulous  precautions.  He 
purposely  abstained,  during  these  investiga- 
tions, from  referring  to  the  Old  Testament,  or 
from  making  any  comparisons  which  might 
cause  him  to  falsify,  even  innocently  and  un- 
consciously, his  observations.  We  can  not 
therefore  fail  to  accord  the  most  complete 
credence  to  evidence  accumulated  with  such 
scientific  thoroughness  and  in  so  hyperconscien- 
tious  a  manner. 

The  legendary  traditions  of  the  Masai  are 
not  the  common  property  of  the  whole  tribe.  It 
is  only  a  few  privileged  families  which  possess 
their  secret,  and  among  these  families  the  stories 
are  handed  down  from  father  to  son.  Like  all 
traditions  thus  preserved,  there  is  imminent 
danger  of  their  dying  out. 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       27 

Captain  Merker,  iu  his  interesting  descrip- 
tion of  Masai  religion,  informs  us  that  the  peo- 
ple possess  no  distinct  priestcraft.  They  gen- 
erally pray  alone,  but  upon  certain  rare  occa- 
sions the  entire  population  of  a  kraal  will  meet 
together  for  devotional  purposes.  Even  in  such 
cases  there  is  an  almost  entire  absence  of  any 
description  of  ceremonial ;  but  it  is  then  that 
the  aged  depositaries  of  Masai  legends  will  come 
forward  and  recite  the  ancient  myths  which 
they  have  learned  from  their  forefathers. 

The  Masai  are,  however,  exceedingly  loth 
that  their  legends  should  be  overheard  by  any 
one  who  is  not  a  member  of  the  community. 
Captain  Merker  tells  us  that  though  for  more 
than  four  years  he  had  been  thoroughly  cogni- 
zant of  the  main  features  of  the  Masai  religion, 
it  was  not  until  the  fifth  year  of  his  sojourn  in 
the  Kilimanjaro  region  that  he  became  aware  of 
the  existence  of  this  store  of  legendary  beliefs. 
To  get  a  comprehensive  idea  of  these  took  him 
another  eighteen  months,  and  he  encountered 
constant  difficulties  in  the  reticence  of  the  na- 
tives. 

I  give  a  very  brief  summary  of  the  Masai 
myths,  which  will,  however,  suffice  to  convince 
the  reader  of  the  astonishing  similarity  existing 
between  them  and  our  own  Biblical  tradition. 


28     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

In  the  beginning  the  earth  was  a  waste  and 
barren  wilderness  in  which  there  dwelt  a  dragon 
alone.  Then  God  came  down  from  heaven, 
fought  with  the  dragon  and  vanquished  it. 
From  the  dragon's  blood,  which  was  water,  the 
barren  rocky  wilderness  was  made  fertile,  and 
the  spot  where  the  struggle  between  God  and 
the  dragon  took  place  became  Paradise.  There- 
after God  created  all  things — sun,  moon,  stars, 
plants,  and  beasts,  and  finally  two  human  be- 
ings. The  man  was  sent  down  from  heaven 
and  was  called  Ma'dumbe,  and  the  woman 
Naitergoi'ob  sprang  from  the  bosom  of  the  earth. 
God  led  them  into  Paradise,  where  they  lived  an 
untroubled  existence.  Of  all  the  fruits  therein 
they  might  eat  by  God's  permission ;  of  one  tree 
alone  they  might  not  taste :  this  was  the  ol  oilai. 
Often  God  came  down  to  see  them,  when  he 
climbed  down  a  ladder  from  heaven.  But  one 
day  he  was  unable  for  a  long  time  to  find  them, 
but  finally  he  discovered  them  crouching  among 
the  bushes.  On  being  asked  the  meaning  of  his 
conduct  Maitumbe  replied  that  they  were 
ashamed  because  they  had  eaten  of  the  for- 
bidden fruit.  "Naitergorob  gave  me  of  the 
fruit,"  he  said,  "and  persuaded  me  to  eat  of  it, 
after  she  had  eaten  of  it  herself."  Naitergorob 
sought  to  excuse  herself  by  saying,  "The  three- 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       29 

headed  serpent  came  to  me,  and  said  that  by 
tasting  the  fruit  we  should  become  like  unto 
thee  and  almighty."  Then  was  'ISTgai  (God) 
wroth,  and  banished  the  two  first  human  beings 
from  Paradise.  He  sent  Rilegen,  the  Morning 
Star,  to  drive  man  out  of  Paradise,  and  to  keep 
watch  thereover. 

This  sample  should  give  a  fair  idea  of  the 
astounding  similarity  to  which  we  have  re- 
ferred. We  can  only  briefly  mention  one  or 
two  of  the  more  striking  parallelisms.  The 
Masai  have  a  story  of  the  first  murder  which 
reminds  us  forcibly  of  the  Bible  account  of  Cain 
and  Abel.  But  even  more  remarkable  is  th© 
Masai  legend  of  the  flood,  sent  as  a  chastisement 
for  human  iniquity.  The  Masai  have  their 
Noah,  the  holy  man  who  is  excepted  from  the 
general  disaster,  and  so  succeeds  in  carrying  on 
the  human  race.  His  name  is  Tumbainot,  and 
he,  too,  builds  him  an  ark,  wherein  his  six  sons 
and  two  wives  are  saved,  together  with  certain 
chosen  animals.  Wlien  the  Masai  Noah  desires 
to  find  out  whether  the  waters  are  subsiding,  he, 
too,  conceives  the  happy  notion  of  sending  forth 
a  dove.  Four  rainbows  are  the  sign  which  tells 
the  Masai  Noah  that  the  wrath  of  God  has 
passed  away. 

The  whole  story  of  the  Decalogue  finds  its 


30     The  Failttre  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

place  in  Masai  tradition.  It  might  have  been 
translated  almost  literally  from  the  Bible.  The 
circumstances  of  the  Divine  lawgiving  are  close 
akin  to  the  Hebrew  version.  Upon  the  summit 
of  ol  donjo  geri  the  thunder  peals  and  the  storm 
rages  as  the  voice  of  God  proclaims  his  law  from 
a  cloud.  Nothing  could  be  more  like  Moses 
upon  Sinai.  But  hearken  to  the  words  of  the 
Masai  commandments.  The  first  is  as  follows: 
^^ There  is  one  God  alone,  who  hath  sent  me  unto 
you.  Heretofore  ye  have  called  him  the  For- 
giver  (E'majan),  or  the  Almighty  {E'mage- 
lani),  but  henceforth  ye  shall  call  him  'Ngai. 
Of  him  ye  shall  make  no  image.  If  ye  follow 
his  commands,  it  Avill  be  well  with  you ;  but  if 
ye  obey  him  not,  famine  and  pestilence  shall 
chastise  you."  Captain  Merker  gives  just  as 
striking  resemblances  between  the  Masai  Deca- 
logue and  the  third,  fifth,  seventh,  ninth,  and 
tenth  commandments. 

It  would  of  course  be  very  natural  to  suppose 
that  these  Masai  legends  were  due  to  the  half- 
forgotten  teachings  of  some  Christian  mission- 
ary. But  Captain  Merker  completely  disposes 
of  any  possibility  of  Christian  influence.  There 
is,  to  begin  with,  no  trace  of  iSTew  Testament 
doctrine  or  history.  The  Masai  tradition  stops 
short  with  the  Divine  lawgiving.     It  is,  more- 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       31 

over,  quite  certain  that  no  foreign  missionaries 
have  at  any  time  carried  tlieir  propaganda  into 
the  Masai  country. 

That  the  Masai  should  at  any  time  have  come 
into  contact  with  Babylonian  culture  is  also 
quite  out  of  the  question.  The  assumption  that 
the  Masai  at  any  period  migrated  into  Africa 
from  Egypt  seems  quite  hypothetical.  We  may, 
at  all  events,  thinks  Captain  Merker,  be  quite 
certain  that  the  immigration  did  not  take  place 
subsequently  to  the  fourth  millennium  B.  C. 
Had  the  Masai  passed  through  Egypt  later  than 
that  date  v^^e  might  look  to  find  some  Avritten 
record  in  Egypt  itself.  Of  the  traditions  which 
the  Masai  possess  we  find  no  trace  among  Egyp- 
tian beliefs,  so  that  there  is  no  likelihood  what- 
ever of  their  having  been  brought  thence.  Even 
if  we  admit  that  the  Masai  came  south,  but  be- 
fore the  fourth  millennium  B.  C,  we  must  recol- 
lect that  at  this  early  period  the  Babylonians 
were  still  plunged  in  Shamanistic  superstitions. 

A  full  consideration  of  the  authentic  story  of 
Masai  legends  and  myths,  doctrine  and  dogma, 
forces  us  to  lay  down  the  following  alternatives : 

1.  Either  the  Masai  have  received  their 
legends  at  the  hands  of  the  Hebrews;  or 

2.  The  Masai  have  received  them  from  the 
Babylonians;  or 


32     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

3.  They  have  invented  them — that  is,  they 
have  been  revealed  to  them  independently ;  or 

4.  Both  the  Babylonians,  Hebrews,  and  the 
Masai,  coming,  as  they  all  did,  from  Arabia, 
had  those  legends  in  common  before  the  Chal- 
dseans  went,  from  Arabia,  northeastward  to 
Babylonia;  the  Hebrews,  northward  to  Pales- 
tine; and  the  Masai,  southward  to  what  is  now 
German  East  Africa. 

There  is  no  fifth  alternative.  For  the  first 
alternative,  the  Hebrew  origin  of  the  Masai 
legends,  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  evidence ;  nor 
is  there  any  for  the  Babylonian  origin  of  those 
legends ;  that  is,  the  second  alternative.  The 
third  alternative,  a  separate  revelation  to  the 
Masai  nation,  is  completely  irrelevant,  either 
for  the  orthodox,  who  believe  in  revelation  only 
as  regards  the  Hebrews ;  or  for  the  "Higher 
Critics,"  who  do  not  believe  in  revelation  at  all, 
whether  to  the  Hebrews  or  to  any  other  nation. 

Remains  the  fourth  alternative,  or  the  com- 
mon origin  of  the  Hebrew,  Babylonian,  and 
Masai  legends  in  the  legends  of  Arabia. 

There  is  little  doubt  that  this,  the  fourth  al- 
ternative, is  the  right  one.  Arabia,  at  all  times 
the  "store-chamber  of  nations,"  was  never  able 
to  feed  her  untold  thousands  of  hardy,  beauti- 
ful, gifted  people.    Accordingly,  they  emigrated 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       33 

in  all  directions,  as  tliej  did  in  the  times  of 
Mahomet  and  at  other  times.  Thousands  of 
years  before  Christ  a  stock  of  religious  and 
other  legends  had  grown  up  amongst  them  about 
the  great  riddles  of  the  M^orld.  This  they  car- 
ried into  their  new  countries ;  and  thus  the 
Babylonians,  the  Hebrews,  the  Masai,  and  very 
probably  many  another  now  unknown  tribe  from 
Arabia,  Avhether  in  Persia,  Afghanistan,  Be- 
luchistan,  or  India,  preserved,  and  still  pre- 
serve, the  legends  about  Creation,  the  Deluge, 
the  Decalogue,  etc.,  in  their  aboriginal  form.  It 
is  just  as  possible,  with  purely  philological  ar- 
guments, to  deduce  the  Masai  legends  from  He- 
brew stories  as  it  is  to  deduce  Hebrew  legends 
from  Babylonian  myths.  Or,  to  put  it  in  a  dif- 
ferent fashion,  the  same  philological  argumente 
that  have  served  to  declare  the  Hebrew  legends 
as  mere  copies  of  Babylonian  myths,  may  now 
be  employed  in  proving  that  all  the  Hebrew 
legends  are  of  Masai  origin,  or  vice-versa.  This 
absolute  inability  of  the  philological  method  of 
''Higher  Criticism"  to  decide  definitively  which 
is  the  parent  and  which  the  child,  at  once  con- 
demns it.  Already  in  the  question  as  to  where 
was  the  original  seat  of  the  "Aryans,"  philolo- 
gians  have,  in  the  last  eighty  years,  given  solu- 
tions locating  that  seat  from  the  Pamir,  through 
3 


34     The  Failure  of  the  Hujher  Criticism. 

South  Ilussia,  to  Sweden.  Such  Cook-tours  are 
not  permissible  in  Science.  If  philological  ar- 
guments are  sufficient  to  persuade  one  set  of 
scholars  that  the  original  home  of  the  Aryans 
was  in  Central  Asia,  while  another  set  of  phil- 
ologians  is  firmly  convinced  that  it  was  in 
Scandinavia,  common  sense  will  tell  any  one 
who  cares  to  listen  to  it  that  philology  is  unable 
to  settle  that  question  at  all.  It  is  even  so  with 
the  original  home  of  the  legends  common  to  the 
Hebrews,  Babylonians,  and  Masai  negroes.  If 
it  should  be  found  out  that  the  Cossa^ans,  Elam- 
ites,  Scythians,  or  any  other  Central  Asiatic 
tribe  had  legends  similar  to  those  of  the  He- 
brews, then  philologians  will  drop  the  ^'Baby- 
lonian" theory  with  contempt,  and  deduce  all 
the  Old  Testament  from  Cossajan,  Elamite,  or 
Scythian  origins. 

This  may  be  very  erudite,  it  is  at  the  same 
time  most  preposterouss.  The  possession  of 
certain  legends  does  not  prove  much.  A  multi- 
tude of  nations  may  have  had  legends  similar  to 
those  of  tlie  Hebrews,  or  to  those  of  the  iSTew 
Testament.  What  no  nation  other  than  the  He- 
brews ever  had  were  Moses,  David,  the 
Prophets,  Jesus.  These  personalities,  in  whom 
the  greatest  forces  of  history  became  focussod 
and  intensified;  these  personalities,  that  really 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       35 

made  Hebrew  history,  if  on  the  basis  of  na- 
tional tendencies  and  national  opportunities ; 
these  personalities  are  the  distinctive  feature  of 
Hebrew  history.  They  stand  to  the  persons  of 
Babylonian  history,  or  Masai  history,  as  does 
Shakespeare's  Hamlet  to  the  Hamlet  in  the  dry 
chronicle  of  the  Dane  Saxo  Grammaticus.  If 
Lord  Bacon  had  written  a  thousand  lines  in 
Shakespeare's  Hamlet,  he  would  not  have  writ- 
ten Hamlet.  Wliat  makes  Shakespeare's  Ham- 
let is  the  immortal  and  inexhaustible  typical 
personality  of  Hamlet  himself,  which  must 
necessarily  be  the  product  of  one  vast  poetic 
imagination,  and  is  by  no  means  the  arithmet- 
ical sum  of  this  sentence  or  that  iu  the  piece 
called  Hamlet.  Even  so  the  personality  of 
Moses,  David,  the  Prophets,  or  Jesus,  is  not  an 
arithmetical  sum  of  a  number  of  sayings ;  but 
the  integration  of  forces,  national  and  hyper- 
national.  One  may  prove  that  this  saying  of 
Jesus  is  Buddhistic,  and  the  other  is  taken  from 
the  Zend-Avesta.  What  can  never  be  deduced  is 
the  transcendental  personality  of  Jesus.  The 
marble  slabs  of  the  Parthenon  canie  from  the 
Pentelicus  or  other  mounts ;  the  Parthenon 
came  from  the  Athenians  of  the  fifth  century 
B.  C.  Says  Poet  to  Dives :  "The  land  is  yours ; 
the  landscape  is  mine." 


36     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

It  is  evident  that  pliilological  reasoning  which 
brings  ns  to  results  which  are  so  little  perma- 
nent, resnlts  which  are  absolutely  overturned 
by  the  first  chance  discovery,  must  have  some- 
thing fundamentally  wrong  in  it.  This  funda- 
mental and  initial  vice,  quod  tractu  temporis 
convalescere  nequit,  which  can  be  cured  neither 
by  the  moderation  and  soberness  of  Hommel, 
who,  together  with  a  few  other  historians,  has 
not  yet  given  in  to  the  claims  of  the  ''Higher 
Critics,"  nor  by  a  still  greater  refinement  of 
philological  methods, — this  initial  fault  has 
vitiated,  and  will  vitiate,  all  modern  hyper- 
criticism  of  ancient  records.  Nor  is  there  any 
particular  difficulty  in  finding  out  the  true  na- 
ture of  tliis  faidt.  It  is  this:  The  history  of 
the  ancient  nations  must  be  constructed,  not  on 
the  basis  of  the  philological  study  of  their 
records,  but  mainly  on  the  basis  of  considera- 
tions of  geogTaphy,  or,  as  the  present  writer  has 
ventured  to  call  it,  of  geo-politics.  What  made 
the  few  tribes,  "Semitic"  or  other,  in  Palestine, 
Syria,  and  Phcenicia,  so  important  a  factor  in 
history  was  neither  their  language  nor  their 
"race."  The  Hebrews  and  the  Phoenicians  have 
indeed  played  in  history  a  role  of  the  first  mag- 
nitude. So  have,  even  in  a  greater  measure, 
the  Hellenes.     All  the  three  were — and  this  is 


Argum.ent  from  the  Masai  Legends.       37 

the  capital  point — border-nations  proper.    They 
lived  on  the  great  line  of  friction  between  the 
powerful  and  civilized  inland  Empires  of  As- 
syria, Babylon,  Egypt,  the  Hittites,  the  Phryg- 
ians, the  Lydians,  etc.     All  these  inland  Em- 
pires necessarily,  and  as  a  matter  of  history, 
gravitated    towards  the   '"Great    Sea,"   or  the 
Mediterranean;   all  the  peoples  on  the  ''line" 
between  the  Mediterranean  and  the  territories 
of  the  conflicting  Empires  were  then  necessarily 
exposed  to  the  maximum  of  friction,   danger, 
and  deeply  agitated  activity.       Those  nations 
were  called  the  Hellenes,  the  Phoenicians,  the 
Hebrews,  the  Edomites,  etc.     Being  in  immi- 
nent danger  of  absorption  at  the  hands  of  the 
Empires,  those  nations  could  not  but  see,  and 
did  see,  that  they  could  protect  themselves  with 
success  only  by  having  recourse  either  to  the 
immense  leverage  of  sea-power,  which  the  Em- 
pires did  not  possess ;  or  by  energizing  them- 
selves both  intellectually  and  politically  to  a  de- 
gree much  more  intense  than  the  Empires  had 
ever  done.       Accordingly  some  of  them  were 
forced  to  lay  extraordinary  premiums  on  higher 
intellect    and   spiritual  growth,    by  means  of 
which  they  resisted  the  more  massive  onslaught 
of  the  intellectually  inferior  Empires.     What 
the  sea  was  to  the  Hellenes  and  the  Phoenicians, 


38      The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

the  desert  was  to  the  Hebrews:  both  sets  of 
border-nations  were  aided  by  nature  in  their 
Titanic  struggle  against  fearful  odds.  What 
Monotheism  was  to  the  Hebrews,  greater  polit- 
ical, artistic,  and  philosophic  achievements  were 
to  the  Hellenes  and  the  Phoenicians.  The  real 
leaven  of  ancient  History  is  represented,  not 
by  the  huge  Empires  of  Assyria,  Babylonia, 
Egypt,  etc. ;  but  by  the  small  border-nations 
called  Hebrews,  Phoenicians,  and  Hellenes. 
These  small  but  ever-memorable  people  did,  by 
higher  intellect,  on  the  western  coast  of  Asia, 
what  in  our  times  the  Japanese,  another  border- 
nation,  have  done  on  the  eastern  shores  of  Asia, 
thanks  to  a  deliberate  Europeanization  of  their 
intellect.  Nearly  suffocated  by  two  huge  Em- 
pires, Russia  and  China,  and  not  less  jeopard- 
ized by  several  more  European  gi'eat  powers,  the 
Japanese  have,  by  conscious  self-education  and 
Europeanization,  succeeded  in  securing,  at  any 
rate,  their  existence  as  a  great  power,  and  per- 
haps more.  Whoever  the  Greeks  originally  may 
have  been,  whether  "Celtic"  or  "Aryan,"  "Pe- 
lasgic"  or  "Hittitc,"  they  were  unable  to  do 
anything  remarkable  before  they  arrived  at  an 
historical  locus,  where  geo-political  circum- 
stances compelled  them  to  mature  indefinitely 
their    mental    and    physical    endo^\anent.      To 


Argument  from  the  Masai  Legends.       39 

search  laboriously  into  the  problem  of  the  "race" 
of  the  Hellenes  is  infinitely  less  important  than 
to  point  out  and  to  investigate  the  working  of 
those  geo-political  circumstances  in  the  second 
millennium  B.  C. 

Higher  Criticism  stands  therefore  con- 
demned from  the  outset.  It  is  based  on  purely 
philological  considerations  in  a  matter  that  is 
almost  exclusively  founded  on  considerations 
geo-political.  Several  more  "Masai"  peoples 
may  yet  be  discovered,  with  several  more  strik- 
ing similarities  to  the  myths,  legends,  dogmas 
of  the  Hebrews.  But  what  can  never  be  dis- 
covered are  other  cases  of  the  peculiar  geo- 
political circumstances  of  the  second  millen- 
nium B.  C.  in  Western  Asia.  Nor  can  it  be 
discovered  that  a  series  of  leading  Personalities, 
such  as  the  border-nations  in  Western  Asia,  and 
they  alone,  then  needed,  were  found  in  Central 
Africa,  or  can  be  dispensed  with  in  Palestine, 
Phcenicia,  and  the  Hellenic  Islands.  That 
gigantic  intellectual  struggles,  such  as  those 
border-nations  were  forced  to  undertake  or  else 
perish,  can  not  be  conducted  without  Person- 
alities of  the  first  order,  only  a  mere  text-critic 
can  doubt.  One  may  deny  the  existence  of  the 
Jews;  but  once  their  existence  is  conceded  one 
can  not  deny  the  existence  of  Moses.     One  may 


40     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

deny  the  existence  of  the  Carthusians ;  but  once 
their  existence — i.  e.,  their  secular  spiritual 
struggle  with  all  the  forces  of  life — is  admitted, 
one  can  not  possibly  deny  the  historic  existence 
of  St.  Bruno.  One  may  minimize,  or  doubt  the 
Reformation;  but  certainly  not  Luther.  "Higher 
Criticism"  has  arrived  at  its  final  term:  bank- 
ruptcy. 


CHAPTEK  II. 

The  Akgument  from  the  Border-Nations. 


CHAPTER  II. 

The  Argument  from  the  Border-Nations. 

To  THE  "Remonstrance"  of  Canon  Cheyne 
in  the  March  number  of  this  Review  I  here 
offer  my  reply ;  aUhough  it  is  difficult  to  reply 
to  one  who  excels  in  the  art  of  saying  and  un- 
saying the  same  thing  in  the  same  breath.  The 
learned  Canon  takes  me  to  task  for  having  de- 
clared Higher  Criticism  bankrupt ;  but  does  he 
not  "assert-'  himself  the  "inadequacy"  of  "the 
prevalent  methods  of  Higher  Criticism"  (p. 
367)  ?  "Wliat  is  "inadequacy"  in  cool  Oxford, 
may  that  not  adequately  be  called  "bankruptcy" 
in  lively  London  ?  The  reverend  Professor  calls 
my  little  book  ("Success,"  etc.)  "illuminating," 
and  that  is  very  flattering  for  me.  I  now  feel 
that  I  have  done  something.  But  then  again,  I 
am  told  that  I  am  "vag-ue  and  paradoxical." 
Paradoxical,  si  Deo  placet,  I  may  be;  but  not 
vague.  I  beg  to  assure  my  very  learned  critic 
that  I  am  not  vague.  I  may  be  totally  mis- 
43 


44     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

taken  in  most  things  I  say,  but  I  can  not  be 
vague.  Having  given  over  thirty  years  of  close 
study  and  observation  to  the  topics  of  history 
before  I  rushed  into  print,  I  knew  very  well 
what  I  was  saying  when  I  wrote  about  the  bank- 
ruptcy of  Higher  Criticism.  Is  there  any 
vagueness  in  saying  that  Higher  Criticism  is 
bankrupt  %  It  is  the  clearest  thing  in  the  world. 
It  may  be  wrong,  but  certainly  it  is  not  vague. 
Remains  "paradoxical."  Perhaps  Professor 
Cheyne  will  allow  me  to  give  him  my  definition 
of  "paradoxical."  It  is,  in  too  many  cases,  the 
original  idea  of  a  "free  lance,"  which  is  first 
duly  cried  down  by  the  professional  scholars — 
%.  e.,  by  such  as  have  chairs ;  a  few  years  later, 
however,  these  very  chairs  take  up  that  very 
original  idea,  sometimes  forgetting  to  mention 
the  name  of  him  who  first  uttered  it.  In  this 
sense,  I  make  bold  to  say,  I  am  thoroughly 
paradoxical.  When,  fifteen  years  ago,  I  first 
pointed  out  that  Infamia  was  the  most  impor- 
tant legal-political  institution  of  the  Romans,  I 
was  duly  mis  a  Vindex.  Strange  to  say,  the 
same  silly  idea  was  revealed  as  a  fundamental 
truth  to  scholars  here  and  abroad,  from  four  to 
six  years  after  I  had  published  my  Oxford  lec- 
tures in  1890.  I  am  now  pilloried  for  sundry 
ideas,  in  the  elaboration  of  which  I  have  spent 


Arguinent  from  the  Border-Nations.      45 

a  lifetime ;  in  the  misunderstanding  of  which 
my  critics  spend  an  hour ;  and  in  the  copying  of 
Avhich  they  will  spend  many  a  year.  Undoubt- 
edly, I  am  paradoxical ;  nor  can  I  afford  the  lux- 
ury of  modesty.  I  have  waited  too  long.  The 
eve  is  approaching.  I  must  make  haste  to  say 
what  I  have  to  say.  In  the  present  case,  too,  I 
will  hasten  to  the  point.  I  might  indeed  make 
various  remarks  on  the  Canon's  suggestion  that 
I  am  not  quite  at  home  in  the  bibliography  of 
the  problems  here  discussed.  But  I  am  sure,  if 
Canon  Cheyne  knew  just  a  little  more  of  me, 
he  woidd  have  avoided— let  us  say— exposing 
himself  to  that  extent.  Or  does  the  Canon 
mean  to  imply  that  of  all  the  well-calendared 
and  indexed  "literatures"  of  learned  subjects, 
I  do  not  know  the  most  perfect  and  handiest 
bibliography,  that  of  theology  ?  That  I  have 
not,  a  hundred  times  a  year,  handled  the  Theo- 
logischer  Jahreshericht,  Theologische  I/iteratur- 
zeitung,  Brieger's  Zeitschrift  fiir  Kirchenge- 
schichte,  not  to  speak  of  the  respective  sections 
in  Jastrow's  JaliresbericMe,  nor  of  the  leading 
works  up  to  that  of  Jacquier  in  this  year  ? 

Let  us  drop  such  pedantries.  I  do  not  doubt 
one  moment  that  Canon  Cheyne  has  laid  his 
hand  on  every  book,  thesis,  or  essay,  bearing  on 
the  subjects  of  his  research.   The  bibliographies. 


46     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

past  and  current,  of  theology  are  far  too  perfect 
for  that.  I  do  not  doubt  the  Canon's  knowl- 
edge of  books.  I  doubt  most  decidedly  his  and 
his  friends'  knowledge  of  the  subject.  I  doubt ; 
in  fact,  I  assert  that  whatever  the  Higher  Crit- 
ics, whether  Canon  Chejne,  Hugo  Winckler,  or 
Professor  Driver  may  know  about  the  langiiage 
of  the  Old  Testament,  they  know  most  inade- 
quately the  subject-matter  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. A  Avord  about  the  langiiage.  We  have  a 
witness  of  first-rate  value  to  the  effect  that  our 
knowledge  of  Hebrew  is  very  poor.  Spinoza — 
not  only  of  Jewish  origin,  but  also  up  to  his 
eighteenth  year  a  student  of  Hebrew  lore  in  a 
Hebrew  academy,  where  lectures  in  the  upper 
classes  were  delivered  and  discussed  in  Hebrew 
—  Spinoza  expressly  informs  us  that  our  knowl- 
edge of  that  ancient  language  is  very  poor.  Ac- 
cordingly no  Winckler  in  the  world  can  advance 
that  for  linguistic  and  stylistic  researches  into 
the  Old  Testament  he  or  any  one  else  can  make 
good  the  first  and  chief  condition  of  success :  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  the  idiom.  Spinoza 
says  {Tractatus  iheologico-politicus,  cap.  vii,  in 
Opera,  ed.  Van  Vloten  and  Land,  II,  p.  45) : 
'^  .  .  Hebr£ea  autem  natio  omnia  oma- 
menta  omneque  decus  perdidit  .  .  .  nee 
nisi  pauca  quacdam  fragmenta  linguae  et  pau- 


A-rgument  from  the  Border-Nations.     47 

corum  libroritm  retinuit;  omnia  enim  fere  nom- 
ina  fructuum,  avium,  piscium,,  et  permulta  alia, 
temporum,  injuria,  periere.  Signifcatio  deinde 
multorum,  nominum  et  verhorum,  quae  in  Bibliis 
occurrunt,  vel  prorsus  ignoratur,  vel  de  eadem 
disputatur.  .  .  .  Non  itaque  semper  poter- 
irnus,  ut  desideramus,  omnes  imiusciiiusque  ora- 
tionis  sensus,  quos  ipsa  ex  linguse  usu  admittere 
potest,  investigare;  et  muUae  occurrunt  ora- 
tiones,  quamvis  nutissiniis  vocihus  expressae, 
quarum  tamen  sensus  obscurissimus  erit  et  plane 
imperceptibilis."  This  much  as  to  the  Hebrew 
language,  and  our  knowledge  thereof. 

If  we  now  turn  to  the  subject  matter  of  Old 
Testament  history  we  see  at  once  that  there  are 
four  points  requiring  the  utmost  care  and  full- 
ness of  research.  The  four  points  are :  ( 1 )  The 
Hebrew  ^Nation;  (2)  the  Hebrew  State;  (3) 
the  great  Hebrew  Personalities;  and  (-i)  the 
Hebrew  Sacred  Book,  the  Bible.  Unless  we  ar- 
rive at  a  clear  and  well-differentiated  concep- 
tion of  these  four  main  pillars  of  Hebrew  his- 
tory, we  can  not  possibly  hope  to  raise  any  per- 
manent edifice  of  knowledge  with  regard  to  He- 
brew antiquity.  The  principal  charge  I  ad- 
vanced, and  do  advance,  against  the  so-called 
Higher  Critics  is  this,  that  as  to  the  first  three 
points  they  have  not  studied  the  problem  at  all ; 


48     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

and  as  to  the  fourth  point  (the  Bible),  that 
they  have  indeed  studied  it,  but  in  a  hopelessly 
wrong  manner.  With  regard  to  the  first  three 
points,  all  that  I  have  to  say  is  my  own ;  with 
regard  to  the  fourth  point,  my  evidence  is  chiefly 
drawn  from  Klostermann's  incomparably  strong 
argumentation  in  his  "Der  Pentateuch."  This 
is  also  one  of  those  ' 'paradoxical,"  if  exceed- 
ingly learned,  books  which  ''the  profession"  has 
first  cried  down,  and  then  apparently  silenced 
by  not  talking  about  it;  but  which,  in  the  end, 
will  be  the  generally  accepted  truth.  It  is  a 
decisive  book,  and  I  will  endeavor  to  bring  its 
main  points,  by  means  of  an  illustration  from 
modern  literary  history,  within  the  grasp  of 
any  unprejudiced  person  of  sense. 

I.  First,  then,  as  to  the  Hebrew  Nation.  The 
orthodox  view,  as  every  one  knows,  is  to  the 
effect  that  the  Hebrews  were  an  exceptional  na- 
tion. This  view,  if  expressed  in  theological  lan- 
guage, runs  thus :  the  Hebrews  were  God's  own 
elect  people.  As  in  most  other  things,  so  in  this 
case,  the  orthodox  view  is  quite  right  in  sub- 
stance, if  not  quite  "correct"  in  form.  The 
Hebrews  v.^ere  an  exceptional  nation.  They 
were  a  border-nation;  that  is,  they  were,  from 
about  1500  to  700  B.  C,  so  placed  in  historical 
space  that  while  they  were  constantly  threatened 


Argument  from  thd  Border-Nations.     49 

with  imminent  absorption  at  the  hands  of  the 
huge  inland  Empires  around  them,  they  yet  were 
enabled  to  baffle  the  designs  on  their  political 
existence  with  success.  There  have  frequently 
been  such  nations  in  the  course  of  history.  They 
unite  two  peculiar  features  in  their  political 
and  intellectual  economy.  They  are  (1)  on  the 
borders  of  one  powerful  Empire,  or  of  several 
Empires;  (2)  they  have,  in  spite  of  their  exi- 
guity, some  leverage  as  a  gift  of  nature  or  his- 
tory equalizing  the  chances  between  them  and 
their  powerful  assailants.  These  two  features 
must  be  combined,  otherwise  the  small  nations 
on  the  borders  of  powerful  Empires  must  in- 
evitably fall  under  the  yoke  of  the  latter.  Such 
a  nation  was  the  people  of  Phoenicia,  whose 
famous  city-states  of  Aradus,  Tyre,  Beyrut,  etc., 
were  never,  or  never  permanently,  conquered  by 
the  Assyrians,  Hittites,  Babylonians,  or  Egyp- 
tians.^    The  simple  reason  of  the  successful  re- 


^The  first  Egyptian  campaign  in  Syria  was  undei* 
Tahutimes  (Thutmasis)  III,  (F.  Petrie,  History  of 
Egypt  (1899)  II,  pp.  103  sq.);  other  campaigns  were 
conducted  by  Amenhotep  II ;  by  Hai-mais  (about  the 
middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  B.C.:  see  Recueil 
de  Travaux  rel.  d  .  .  .  I'archeol.  egypt.  xvii,  pp. 
42  sq.);  by  Sety  I;  by  Ramses  II;  by  Menephtah ;  by 
Ramses  III  (about  twelfth  century  B.  C).  Of  Assyr- 
ian Kings,  Tiglathpileser  I  (about  1100  B.  C.) ;  Ashur- 
irbi  (eleventh  century  B.  C);  see  the  reports  of 
4 


50     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

sistance  of  nearly  all  the  Phoenician  city-states 
on  the  borders  of  the  great  inland  Empires  was 
their  command  of  sea  power,  which  the  Em- 
pires did  not  understand  how  to  acquire.  For 
this  reason,  and  owing  to  the  readier  intellect 
of  the  Phoenicians,  the  Empires  of  the  Hittites, 
Assyrians,  Babylonians,  and  Egyptians  were 
never  able  to  possess  themselves  definitely  of 
the  Phoenician  coast. ^  The  readier  intellect  of 
the  Phoenicians  was  a  natural  consequence  of 
circumstances,  owing  to  which  border-nations, 
living,  as  they  do,  constantly  on  the  qui  vive, 
must  inevitably  lay  a  great  premium  on  ready 
intellect  as  the  sole  remedy  in  moments  of  gi'eat 
danger.  The  more  frequent  the  danger,  the 
keener  the  intellect  averting  or  combating  it. 
The  people  of  Aradus,   Tyre,   Byblos,   Sidou, 


Salmanassar  II,  in  H.  Winckler,  Keilschrijl.  u.  d.  alte 
Test.  (1902),  p.  38 ;  Ashurnasubal  in  876  B.  C. ;  Salman- 
assar II,  in  85G  B.  0. ;  Tiglathpilesei-  III,  in  742  and 
738  B.  C. ;  Sanherib,  in  704 ;  etc.  Maspero,  Hist, 
ancienne  III  (1899),  pp.  41,  279,  280,  281,  288,  352.  The 
inscription  in  Schrader's  Krilinschr.  Bibl.  I,  125,  127,  is 
wrongly  interpreted  by  Wincklcr  as  proving  the 
conquest  of  Aradus  by  Tiglathpileser  I. 

2  Even  Byblos  declared,  about  1075  B.  C,  to  an 
Egyptian  envoy  asking  for  permission  to  cut  timber 
in  the  Lebanon,  that  neither  Zeker-baal,  its  then 
king,  nor  his  ancestors  had  ever  been  under  Egyptian 
rule.  See  in  Golenischeff,  Recueil  de  Travaux  (1899), 
the  diary  of  the  Egyptian  envoy's  journey. 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.     51 

etc.,  were  like  sentinels,  eagerly  listening  to 
every  rumor  or  sign  from,  the  lands  of  the  Hit- 
tites,  Assyrians,  Babylonians,  or  Egyptians,  let 
alone  the  ^gsean  islands.  Thus  they  could  not 
help  becoming  people  of  singularly  keen  intel- 
lect. For,  however  frequently  the  inland  Em- 
pires were  baffled  in  their  attempt  at  securing 
the  coast  of  Syria  and  Phoenicia,  they  could 
never  relax  in  their  designs  on  this,  the  indis- 
pensable outlet  to  their  inland  possessions.  The 
Phoenicians,  then,  were  a  border-nation  yar  ex- 
cellence, and  an  exceptional  nation.  I  mention 
them  because  it  so  happens  that  we  know  very 
much  more  about  their  history  in  the  second 
half  of  the  second  millennium  B.  C.  than  about 
the  other  numerous  tribes  and  nations  on  the 
great  line  of  friction  between  the  various  Em- 
pires ;  i.  e.,  in  Syria  and  Palestine.  Before 
speaking  of  these  other  border-nations,  and 
more  particularly  of  the  Hebrews,  it  is,  I  take 
it,  most  important  to  discuss,  if  ever  so  briefly, 
the  way  in  which  Hugo  Winckler  treats  of  the 
Phoenicians.  For,  not  only  is  Canon  Cheyne 
much  inclined  to  speak  of  Winckler's  historical 
views  with  great  satisfaction,  but  Winckler  is 
also  held  by  the  Canon  (p.  367)  to  have  ad- 
vanced geo-political  views  on  this  matter.  Quod 
non.   Winckler  knows  nothing  of  border-nations, 


52     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

and  their  immense  importance  in  history  is 
quite  unknown  to  him.  lie  does  not  call  the 
Phoenicians  or  Hebrews  a  border-nation.  I  call 
them  so;  it  is  another  "paradoxical"  idea  of 
mine.  And  I  venture  to  add  (this  time,  with 
Professor  Cheyne's  approbation)  that  this  is  an 
explanation  helping  lis  materially  in  the  his- 
torical construction  of  Syrian,  Phoenician,  and 
Palestinian  events  in  the  second  half  of  the 
second  millennium  B.  C.  I  cordially  thank 
Professor  Cheyne  for  having  declared  this  geo- 
political term  and  view  of  mine  to  be  "excel- 
lent" (p.  367).  But  Winckler  is  quite  inno- 
cent of  it.  ]^ay,  Winckler,  on  the  basis  of  the 
Tel-el-Amarna  letters,  declares  that  the  Phoeni- 
cian towns  of  that  period  (1500  to  1000  B.  C.) 
"give  him  a  most  desolate  impression  of  wretch- 
edness, of  excessive  pettiness  and  insignifi- 
cance."'  The  ruler  of  Gcbal  (Byblos),  Winck- 
ler says,  appears  in  the  Amarna  letters  as  one 
"whining"  and  moaning  for  help  from  Egypt. 
This  can  not  be  denied.  Eib-Addi  of  Byblos 
does  indeed  clamor  for  help  from  Egypt.  But 
apart  from  the  fact  that  other  Phoenician  towns 
(Sidon  and  Arvad  [Aradus])  of  the  same 
period,   far  from   "whining"   for  help,   boldly 


^Hugo  Winckler,  Altorient.    Forsclmngen  I,  pp.  426, 
429. 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.      53 

attack  Egyptian  subjects  and  Egyptian  su- 
premacy;* the  'Svliining"  letters  of  Byblos, 
Tyre,  and  Jerusalem  do  not  in  the  least  prove 
the  helplessness  or  puny  pettiness  of  those  bor- 
der city-states.  It  was  part  of  their  deep  game 
to  appear  helpless  while  intriguing  against  the 
very  power  whose  help  they  implored.  Wliile 
Zimrida  of  Sidon  complains  to  the  Pharaoh 
about  raids  on  the  part  of  the  Habiri  (proba- 
bly the  Hebrews),  Abimilki  of  Tyre  complains 
about  raids  on  the  part  of  that  veiy  Zimrida  of 
Sidon.  ^  The  Phoenician  border-states  acted  as 
materially  small  powers  exposed  to  the  inroads 
of  mighty,  or  apparently  mighty,  empires  have 
always  acted.  The  Italian  city-states  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  including  papal  Rome,  invariably 
"whined"  for  help  from  the  German  or  Greek 
Emperor,    although    they    just    as    invariably 

*  Tel-el-Amarna  Letters,  ed.  H.  Wincklei*  (1896),  pp. 
175  (letter  81),  199  (letter  92),  235  (letter  124),  275 
(letter  150),  283  (letter  155).  Winckler  indeed  says 
(Keilinschr.  u.  d.  alte  Test.  (1902),  j).  199,  that  "Aziru, 
'  amel '  (ruler)  of  the  inland  Amurri,  *  possessed ' 
Arvad,"  and  quotes  the  150th  letter  of  the  Amarna 
collection,  section  59.  The  passage  in  question  in 
Winckler's  own  edition  runs,  however,  '^Zimrida  of 
Sidon  and  Aziru  rebel  against  the  king,  and  the  people 
of  Arvad  have  conferred  with  another."  This  certainly 
does  not  prove  that  Aziru  possessed  Arvad. 

^Amarna  Letters,  letters  Nos.  147,  148,  149,  150,  151, 
155. 


54     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticisun. 

turned  against,  those  emperors  a  few  months  or 
years  after  they  had  implored  Imperial  assist- 
ance, if  circumstances  had  changed.  Pope  John 
XII  asked  Otto  the  Great  in  960  A.  D.  ''for 
the  love  of  God"  to  come  into  Italy  and  to  save 
the  Church  of  St.  Peter."  Shortly  afterwards 
Pope  John  became  the  most  violent  adversary  of 
Otto.  The  Italian  town  of  Beneventum  asked 
Emperor  Lothar  III,  "with  tears,"  to  help  it 
against  Roger  Count  of  Sicily,  in  1133.^  Four 
years  later  the  good  citizens  of  Beneventum 
turned  a  deaf  ear  to  all  the  offers  and  proposals 
of  the  same  Lothar.'"  This  was  evidently  also 
the  'poliiique  de  bascule  of  the  Phoenician  city- 
states.  "When  Egypt  attacked  them,  they  be- 
came the  allies  of  the  Hittites  or  of  the  Baby- 
lonians, or  vice  versa.  When  they  were  beaten 
on  land,  they  withdrew  to  their  impregnable 
island-towns.  The  alliances  and  counter-al- 
liances lietween  tlie  border-nations  themselves 
were  countless.     All  the  resources  of  the  sub- 


''"Misit  nobis  in  Saxoniam  nuntios,  vogans  ut  ob 
amoreni  Dei  in  Italiam  veniremus  et  ecclesiam  Sancti 
Petri  ac  se  ipsum  ex  eorum  faucibus  liberaremus " 
(Liudprandus,  Hist.  Otton,  c.  15). 

^"Lacryniis  orantes,  ut  civitatem  Beneventanani 
a  comite  Kdgerio  Siculoi-uni  jugiter  oppressam  liber- 
arent,"  Falco,  Chron.,  p.  113  (ap.  Muratori,  Scr.  Rer. 
Hal.,  vol.  V.) 

SFalco,  i7a  p.  121. 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.     55 

tlest  diplomacy  must  have  come  into  play;  just 
as  of  all  European  States  in  modern  times  small 
Savoy  always  practiced  the  most  refined  and 
far-seeing  diplomacy.'' 

To  put  it  briefly :  the  border-nations  in  Syria, 
PhcEuicia,  and  Palestine,  in  the  second  half  of 
the  second  millennium  B.  C,  were  the  most  im- 
portant of  all  the  nations  then  known  to  West- 
ern Asia.  It  is  they  who,  under  stress  of  secu- 
lar and  Titanic  struggles  against  immense  odds, 
were  forced  into  developing  the  one  force  that 
will  give  even  small  nations  a  decisive  supe- 
riority over  ever  so  large  Empires  less  endowed 
with  gifts  of  that  force.  That  force  is  intellect, 
and  intellectual  organization  of  resources  ma- 
terial or  spiritual.  The  inland  Empires  had, 
long  before  the  rise  of  the  border-nations  proper, 
developed,  in  a  slovenly  and  unsystematic  fash- 
ion, certain  resources  of  the  human  intellect. 
But  they  never  crystallized  observations  into 
principles;  dwellers  into  citizens;  houses  or 
monuments  into  Art  proper;  speech  into  Liter- 
ature; religious  emotions  into  Eeligion.    These 


9  In  the  recent  excavations  and  finds  nt  Tel  Ta'annek 
(under  Dr.  Ernst  Sellin)  we  have  secured  additional 
glimpses  of  the  agitated  life  of  some  of  the  border- 
nations  in  Syria.  See  Denkschriften  of  the  Vienna 
Akademie,  Philos.  Hist.  Classe,  No.  IV,  ex.  1904,  in  fol. 
pp.  123.  ill. 


56     Tlie  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

great  feats  were  reserved  for  the  border-nations, 
and  for  them  alone;  for  the  Hebrews,  Phoeni- 
cians, Hellenes,  and,  no  doubt,  many  another 
now  forgotten  people,  who,  under  secular  stress, 
making  Intellect  and  System  a  sine  qua  nori  of 
their  existence,  were  driven  into  a  most  pene- 
trating attempt  at  organizing  their  lives  in  one, 
two,  or  more  directions.  Had  geography  not 
aided  them  by  geo-political  advantages  of  sit- 
uation, they  would  at  once  have  been  swallowed 
up  by  the  Empires.  Had  they  not  developed 
Intellect,  their  geo-political  situation  could  not 
have  availed  them  very  long. 

In  other  words,  all  these  border-nations  were 
per  eminentiam  exceptional  nations.  It  is  not 
in  Babylon,  or  Pan-Babylonianism,  nor  in 
Egypt,  that  we  must  look  for  the  true  begin- 
nings of  real  civilization.  It  is  amongst  the 
border-nations  that  the  great  principles  of  State, 
Art,  Literature,  and  Religion  were  organized 
and  given  undying  vitality. 

If,  now,  we  ask  the  '^Higher  Critics"  what 
historic  rank  they  allot  to  Phoenicians,  Edom- 
ites,  Canaanites,  Hebrews,  Midianites,  etc., 
the  answer  is  one  of  cold  contempt.  In  their 
view,  these  "Semitic"  tribes  were  all  second- 
hand merchandise ;  poor  reflexes  of  Babylonian 
or  Egyptian,  perhaps  Hittite  "culture."      The 


Argument  from  the  Border- Nations.      57 

very  disruption  of  early  history  into  history 
Semitic,  and  history  Hellenic,  clearly  shows  a 
total  want  of  historic  insight.  All  these  nations 
form,  historically,  one  single  group,  the  group 
of  border-nations  in  and  around  Western  Asia. 
They  have  the  same  character ;  the  same  tenden- 
cies; although  in  appearance  they  differ  very 
considerably.  They  are  like  graphite,  coal,  and 
diamond,  which  differ  outwardly  and  even  in- 
wardly to  a  large  extent,  but  which  yet  are, 
chemically,  one  and  the  same  substance,  carbon. 

We  may  now  return  to  the  Hebrews.  From 
the  preceding  considerations  it  is  at  once  evi- 
dent that  the  Hebrews,  too,  from  their  very  sit- 
uation in  historic  space,  could  not  but  be  an  ex- 
ceptional nation,  or  not  be  at  all.  They  might 
very  well  have  been  swallowed  up  by  the  neigh- 
boring Empires,  or  annihilated  in  incessant 
warfare  with  the  other  numerous  border-na- 
tions. But  if  they  contrived  to  survive,  they 
could  not  but  become  an  exceptional,  i.  e.,  a  bor- 
der-nation. 

All  this  is  irrefutable,  and  quite  independent 
of  Scriptural  or  theological  evidence.  It  can  be 
read  off  from  the  map.  It  is  only  by  the  effect 
of  purely  philological  considerations  that  the 
"Semitic"  nations,  when  they  are  small  in 
numbers,   are  made  to  appear  as  insignificant 


58     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

phenomena  in  history.  The  sober  fact  is,  that 
all  the  numerous  peoples  living  between  the 
deserts  of  ]!!»[orth  Arabia  and  Western  Baby- 
lonia, on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Eastern  Medi- 
terranean, on  the  other,  were  put,  certainly  after 
1500  B.  C,  and  probably  long  before  that  date, 
under  such  political  and  military  pressure  as  to 
•ompel  them,  in  sheer  self-defense  to  have  re- 
course to  an  intensification  of  their  intellectual, 
mental,  and  moral  resources  such  as  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  surrounding  Em})ires  neither 
needed  nor  were  enabled  to  realize.  ndAe/Ao? 
TravTwv  /A£V  TraTT^p  iari,  TrdvTOiv  Sc  /3a(rtXei;s,  Koi  Toi<i  ftev 
6eov<;  i8ei$€  tous  Se  avOpuiirov;,  Tov<i  /xev  8ov\ov<:   iTroirjae 

Tovs  Se  iXevOipov;, — "Strife  is  the  Father  of 
all  things,  the  King  of  all ;  it  makes  of 
some  gods,  of  others  men;  of  some  it  makes 
slaves,  of  others  again  freemen."  Heraclitus, 
of  Ephesus,  who  uttered  this,  the  deepest  of 
all  historical  truths,  was  himself  the  citizen  of 
one  of  those  border-states  which  in  secular 
struggles  against  Ilittites,  Phrygians,  Lydians, 
and  other  Imperial  peoples  had  long  learned  to 
know  the  real  quickening  forces  of  its  great- 
ness. 

A  glance  at  the  sketch-map  here  placed  will 
suffice  to  show  the  thoughtful  reader  that  all 
the  small  nations  in  Syria,  Phoenicia,  and  Pal- 


A.rgument  from  the  Border-Nations.      59 

estine,  whatever  their  language  may  or  may  not 
have  been  (which  is  of  quite  secondary  im- 
portance), were,  as  the  symbolic  arrows  show 
it  on  the  map,  under  the  constant  and  immense 
stimulus  of  the  most  imperiled,  yet  not  impos- 
sible position  of  border-nations,  because  the 
various  inland  Empires  all  closed  round  them. 
What  the  sea  was  to  the  Phoenicians,  the  desert 
was  to  many  a  border-nation  dwelling  more  in- 
land.    It  offered  them  a  safe  place  of  refuge. 

I  can  not  but  say  that  the  following  sketch- 
may,  although  all  its  lines  expressing  bounda- 
ries or  movements  are  only  symbolically  true 
{i.  e.,  true  for  various  periods,  not  for  one 
simultaneous  period),  is  the  first,  the  funda- 
mental consideration  in  any  study  of  Hebrew 
antiquities,  including  Bible  criticism.  What 
then  shall  be  said  about  men  like  Wellhausen, 
who,  owing  to  purely  philological  hypercriti- 
cisms,  has  acquired  an  appalling  authority,  and 
who,  in  his  Israeliiiscli  mid  Jildische  Ge- 
schlchte,  actually  contrives  to  write  the  history 
of  the  Hebrews  in  the  second  m  illennium  B.  C. 
without  so  much  as  mentioning  the  influence 
of  the  Empires,  or  the  character  of  the  Hebrews 
as  a  border-nation  ?  So  little  is  Wellhausen 
aware  of  the  true  bearings  of  Hebrew  history, 
that  when   (p.   35,    of    the  third  edition)   he 


60     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.      61 

finally,  at  the  very  end  of  a  long  chapter,  stoops 
to  ask  the  principal  question  of  all  Hebrew  his- 
tory, viz.,  why  the  Hebrews,  and  not,  c.  g.,  the 
Moabites,  came  subsequently  to  be  a  nation  of 
vast  historic  importance,  he  shakes  oft"  the  in- 
convenient query  with  the  well-known  profes- 
sional phrase:  "(das)  liisst  sich  sclillessUch 
nicht  erklaren!"  This  untranslatable  phrase 
means,  that  since  Wellhausen  can  not  see  his 
way  to  solve  the  riddle,  no  one  else  possibly  can 
or  should  try  to  do  so.  This  "Idsst  sich  schliess- 
licJi  7iiclit  erhldren,"  this  "schnodderig" 
schlicsslich,  is,  I  beg  to  submit,  the  openly 
avowed  bankruptcy  of  all  Higher  Criticism  as 
a  means  of  historical  reconstruction  of  past 
events. 

How  incomparably  more  ''wlssenscliaftUch" 
and  critical  is  the  simple  old  tradition!  Let 
us  study  it  exclusively  in  the  light  of  history 
and  geography  and  common-sense  psychology. 
Let  us  drop  Theology  and  Religion  altogether. 

We  saw  that  the  Hebrews  were  a  border-na- 
tion; we  saw  that  for  this  reason  alone  they 
were,  like  the  Dutch,  Scotch,  or  Boers  in  mod- 
ern times,  an  exceptional  nation.  We  likewise 
saw  that  they  shared  this  quality  with  numer- 
ous other  nations  on  the  great  Area  of  Friction, 
such  as  the  Phoenicians,   Moabites,  Edomites, 


62     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

etc.  When,  then,  we  learn  (as  all  agree)  that 
the  Hebrews  had  certainly  as  early  as  the  ninth 
century  B,  C.  a  belief  and  religious  system  of 
Monotheism  which  for  the  last  three  thousand 
years  has  proved  its  immense  force  over  men 
and  destiny,  being,  as  it  is,  the  great  religious 
fortress  of  over  five  hundred  millions  of  the 
most  civilized  and  powerful  peoples,  we  can  not 
but  admit  that  the  singular  influence  of  the  He- 
brews must  have  been  owing  to  their  Mono- 
theism. This  alone,  it  is  true,  would  not  yet 
form  a  great  advance  in  historical  knowledge. 
But  if  we  now  approach  the  question  why  the 
Hebrews,  and  they  alone,  should  have  come  to 
elaborate,  certainly  by  the  tenth,  and  most  prob- 
ably long  before  the  tenth  century  B.  C,  a  sys- 
tem of  belief  endowed  with  an  unique  spiritual- 
izing and  energizing  force ;  then  we  can,  in  com- 
mon psychology,  assume  only  one  thing:  Since 
the  chief  historical  (as  distinct  from  theolog- 
ical) value  of  Hebrew  Monotheism  (as  distinct 
from  any  other  vague  Monotheism  of  some 
Egyptians  or  Babylonians)  consists  mainly  and 
principally  in  its  affording  its  believers  a  stay- 
ing force  and  ever-resisting  tenacity  of  unparal- 
leled intensity,  the  Hebrews  must  at  some  time 
before  the  tenth  century  B.  C,  have  stood  in 
urgent  need  of  such   an  unparalleled  staying 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.      63 

force,  to  aid  them  in  passing  through  national 
crises  of  unparalleled  severity.  This  much  is 
absolutely  certain. 

If  now  it  be,  as  it  undoubtedly  is,  the  most 
legitimate  conclusion,  that  Monotheism  in  its 
Hebrew  fonn  presupposes  some  unparalleled 
national  peril,  for  the  averting  of  which  Hebrew 
Monotheism  has  been  introduced  repeatedly  in 
liistory;  then  we  need  only  inquire  among  the 
various  nations  in  the  Area  of  Friction  whether 
their  chronicles  or  legends  tell  of  any  such  ex- 
traordinary national  peril  that  befell  them  some 
time  in  the  latter  half  of  the  second  half  of  the 
second  millennium  B.  C. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  only  border-nation 
of  which  we  have  a  distinct  tradition  to  the 
effect  that  their  ancestors  had  gone  through  a 
fearful  trial  and  struggle  for  liberation,  are  the 
Hebrews.  The  Hebrews  alone  tell  of  their  ab- 
ject slavery  in  Egypt ;  of  their  Exodus ;  of  their 
fearful  trials  in  the  desert  during  forty  years. 
How,  under  these  circumstances,  can  we  take 
the  liberty,  or  the  arrogance,  I  should  like  to 
say,  to  doubt  this  tradition  ?  Is  it  not  in  per- 
fect harmony  with  the  undoubted  fact  called 
Monotheism,  revealed  in  authentic  writings 
from  the  eighth  century  B.  C,  and  with  the 
infallible    psychological    inference    from    this 


64     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

fact  ?  One  might,  in  the  extreme  case — I  mean 
on  the  strength  of  texts  to  be  discovered  in  the 
future — advance,  that  the  slavery  in  Egypt,  the 
Exodus,  the  forty  years  in  the  desert,  as  related 
in  the  Bible,  are  not  historical  facts.  Yet,  even 
in  this  extreme  case,  which  is  still  absolutely 
hypothetical,  I  should  retort:  "I  accept  the 
newly-discovered  (hypothetical)  Egyptian  or 
Midianitic  evidence  to  tlie  effect  that  the  Exo- 
dus, etc.,  did  not  take  place  at  all.  Yet  I  still 
must  insist  on  some  such  event  in  the  history 
of  the  Hebrews  in  the  latter  half  of  the  second 
millennium  B.  C.  If  the  adversaries  can  not 
deny  some  such  event,  then  they  have  done  noth- 
ing towards  weakening  either  my  chief  fact 
(Amos,  Hosea)  or  my  psychological  inference 
from  that  fact." 

Is  there  such  hypothetical  evidence?  Can 
the  slavery  in  Egypt,  the  Exodus,  the  forty 
years  in  the  desert,  be  shown  to  contradict  ex- 
press and  direct  historical  evidence  from  the 
latter  half  of  the  second  millennium  B.  C.  ? 

There  is  none  whatever.  How,  then,  can  any 
one  feel  entitled  to  doubt  Hebrew  tradition  ?  On 
what  ground  will  ho  do  that  ?  Will  he  deny  the 
authenticity  of  Amos  and  Hosea?  Or  will  he 
contest  the  correctness  of  the  psychological  in- 
ference from  Amos  and  Hosea  ?   In  either  case 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.     65 

he  undertakes  a  hopeless  task.  As  the  Boers 
could  never  have  been  energized  into  a  nation 
of  the  most  extraordinary  power  of  resistance 
without  their  previous  terrible  trek  or  exodus 
for  twenty  years  in  the  wildest  parts  of  Africa, 
so  the  Hebrews  could  never  have  embraced  and 
spread  the  most  energetic  of  religious  beliefs 
without  some  immense  national  trial.  Tradi- 
tion says  this  trial  was  Egypt,  the  Exodus,  the 
Desert.  We  have  no  historical  evidence  con- 
tradicting this.  AMience,  then,  shall  we  take  the 
right  to  doubt  it  ? 

It  is  thus  quite  evident  that  Higher  Criticism 
has  entirely  neglected  or,  at  best,  misconstrued 
the  first  of  the  four  factors  of  Hebrew  antiquity, 
the  Hebrew  nation.  It  has  seen  neither  its  ex- 
ceptional character  nor  the  causes  thereof; 
neither  the  dominant  fact,  nor  its  psychological 
inferences  and  antecedents.  We  shall  now  ex- 
amine much  more  briefly  the  second  factor,  the 
Hebrew  State. 

II.  As  the  Hebrew  Nation,  so  the  Hebrew 
State  has  been  neglected  by  the  Higher  Critics. 
For  them  a  State  is  a  State,  just  as  the  word 
"Godhead"  is  philologically  only  a  substantive, 
like  "cat."  However,  there  is  vast  difference 
between  State  and  State.  Not  only  are  some 
States  monarchical,  others  oligarchical,  others 
5 


66     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

again  democratic.  This  refers  only  to  the  mere 
form  of  States.  But  as  to  origin  and  physiology, 
some  States  are  like  organic  pyramids  growing 
from  the  broad  basis  of  popular  wishes  and 
forces  upwards,  tapering  to  a  head,  like  most 
Continental  States;  other  States  again  are 
cephalic  pyramids,  growing  from  the  top  down- 
wards to  the  broad  base.  The  State  of  Geneva, 
under  Calvin  in  the  sixteenth  century  was 
cephalic ;  so  is  each  great  Order  of  the  Catholic 
Church;  so  is  the  Roman  (not  the  Greek  or 
Anglican)  Catholic  Church ;  so  were  Sparta, 
Rome,  Syracuse,  and  many  another  classical 
State.  So  was  the  Hebrew  State.  He  who 
does  not  see  that  sees  nothing.  Border-nations, 
ever  imperiled,  ever  constrained  to  organize 
themselves  into  the  most  efficient  form  of  polity, 
must  inevitably  put  their  organization  into  the 
hands  of  a  few  men,  and,  in  very  urgent  cases, 
into  those  of  One  Great  Personality.  By  doing 
so  they  secure  Unity,  Readiness,  Efficiency. 
The  Hebrew  State  showed  at  all  times  (from 
about  1250  to  700  B.  C.)  the  immistakable 
symptoms  of  a  State  actuated  and  energized  by 
a  central,  personal,  and  all-pervading  Force, 
whether  a  nomothetes,  a  Judge,  a  King,  or  a 
Prophet.  As  in  the  sphere  of  religion  the  He- 
brews ever  tended  to  Monotheism;   so  in  the 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.     67 

sphere  of  State-life  they  ever  tended  to  con- 
centration in  One  Personality.  They  were  in- 
deed a  cephalic  State  proper. 

Have  the  Higher  Critics  so  much  as  ap- 
proached this  vital  point  \  Can  any  book  or 
essay  be  pointed  out  in  which  they  have  ex  pro- 
fesso,  treated  of  the  peculiar,  i.  e.,  the  cephalic 
nature  of  the  Hebrew  State  ? 

There  can  thus  be  no  doubt  that  Higher  Crit- 
icism, quod  dicitiir,  has  proved  itself  unable  to 
treat  adequately  of  the  second  great  factor  of 
Hebrew  antiquity,  of  the  Hebrew  State. 

III.  We  now  come  to  the  third  factor,  to  He- 
brew Personalities;  that  is,  to  Moses,  to  the 
Judges,  Kings,  and  Prophets. 

Canon  Cheyne  says  (p.  363)  :  "I  am  myself 
one  of  those  who  hold  the  historical  existence 
of  a  personage  called  Moses  to  be  unproved  and 
improbable."  Nothing  could  be  more  correct. 
A  "personage"  Moses  can  indeed  not  be  proved 
directly,  and  apart  from  the  Bible,  to  have  ex- 
isted. But  a  Personality  called  Moses  can.  A 
"personage"  is  any  person,  a  cobbler,  a  copyist, 
a  philologian.  A  Personality,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  not  le  premier  venu.  It  is  a  person  endowed 
with  as  yet  unanalyzable  forces  of  persuasion 
and  action.  It  is  a  person  like  Themistocles, 
Pericles,  Caesar,  Jeanne  d'Arc,  Calvin,  Crom- 


68     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

well,  Chatham,  ISTapoleon.  This  is  said,  not  be- 
cause (as  the  Canon  suggests),  ^'some  historians 
dwell  more  on  personalities,  and  some  more  on 
intellectual  currents  and  tendencies"  (p.  363). 
The  true  student  of  history  will  for  each  prob- 
lem severally  decide,  or  try  to  decide,  whether 
''currents"  were  its  real  causes  or  "Personali- 
ties." In  the  case  of  the  Hebrews,  as  We  have 
seen.  Personalities  are  the  sine  qua  non  of  their 
success.  That  an  Exodus  can  not  be  carried  out 
without  a  guiding  and  towering  Personality, 
only  a  recluse  philologian  can  doubt.  That 
Monotheism  requires,  to  the  present  day,  in- 
dividual persuasion  by  single  missionaries,  in- 
stead of  spreading,  as  do  other  religions,  by 
contagion,  is  a  matter  of  fact  too  obvious  to  need 
proofs.  Once  we  admit  the  Exodus — and  we 
can  not,  up  to  this  writing,  but  admit  it  as  a 
perfectly  safe  assumption  of  fact — we  are  con- 
strained, by  elementary  psychology,  to  admit  a 
Personality  organizing  the  Exodus  and  its  se- 
quel. That  Personality,  the  Bible  says,  was 
called  Moses.  It  is  quite  possible  that  his  name 
was  Sesom,  or  Uriah,  or  Smith ;  and  I,  for  one, 
shall  at  once  change  his  name,  as  soon  as  con- 
temporary or  otherwise  conclusive  evidence 
shall  be  put  before  me  that  his  name  was  not 
Moses,  but  Smith.    But  I  can  never  admit  that 


Argument  froin  the  Border-Nations.     69 

there  never  was  a  Personality  called  Moses  or 
Smith.  The  name  is  accidental;  his  role  is 
psychologically  undoubted  and  irrefutable. 

Of  course,  when  ''Higher  Critics"  (as  does 
Canon  Cheyne,  p.  363),  require  us  to  prove  the 
existence  of  Abraham  as  well,  and  in  the  same 
way  as  that  of  Moses,  then  we  can  only  regret- 
fully decline  the  task.  Abraham  is  not  a  Per- 
sonality. There  is  no  safe  psychological  infer- 
ence from  the  work  he  did  to  his  personal  ex- 
istence, lie  is  a  person ;  an  interesting  per- 
son; a  patriarch;  an  eminent  man.  His  exist- 
ence has  to  be  proved  by  means  essentially  dif- 
ferent from  those  applicable  in  the  case  of 
Moses.  I  can  safely  infer  the  existence  of  Ly- 
curgus  in  the  ninth  century  B.  C.  from  the 
Spartan  constitution  in  the  fifth  century  B.  C. ; 
but  I  can  not  do  the  same  thing  with  regard  to 
Pausanias,  the  victor  of  Platsea,  in  the  fifth 
century  B.  C,  from  the  history  of  Cleomenes 
III  in  the  third  century  B.  C.  An  eminent 
Person  is  still  very  far  from  a  Personality; 
an  avrip  SoKLfios  ("a  prominent  man")  from  a 
vojxodcTT]^.  Abraham  may  very  well  have  ex- 
isted ;  there  is  nothing  that  has  so  far  been  ad- 
vanced that,  in  my  view,  militates  against  his 
existence.  But  we  can  not  with  regard  to  him 
rely,    outside  direct  evidence,    upon  evidence 


70     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

purely  psychological.  He  is  not  an  historical 
Personality.  The  Higher  Critics,  treating  per- 
sons like  vocables,  amongst  which  there  is  in- 
deed no  difference  of  rank  and  efficiency,  do  not 
see  that.  That  is  precisely  why  they  have  failed 
to  do  justice  to  the  third  great  factor  of  Hebrew 
antiquity,  to  Hebrew  Personality. 

IV.  We  now  come  to  the  fourth  factor  of 
Hebrew  antiquity,  the  Bible.  We  beg  to  re- 
peat: the  "Higher  Critics"  have  never  made  a 
serious  or  systematic  study  of  the  first  three 
])oints  or  factors  discussed  in  the  preceding  part 
of  this  article.  Of  this,  the  fourth  factor,  they 
have  indeed  made  a  most  elaborate  study,  "ana- 
lyzing" every  single  line  and  word  of  the  Old 
and  Xew  Testaments  in  thousands  of  books, 
theses,  essays,  and  articles.  Yet  nothing  can 
be  more  evident  than  that  their  whole  method 
is  radically  wrong ;  as  wrong  as  was  that  of  the 
thousands  of  Wolfian  Homer-Kritiher,  who 
tried,  in  innumerable  works,  to  refine  grand  old 
Homer  into  Homer  Ltd.  At  present,  as  wit- 
ness the  elaborate  works  of  V.  Terret,  Drerup, 
Breard,  and  so  many  others,  Homer  Ltd.  is 
bankrupt,  and  Homer  is  still  Homer.  Shall  I 
remind  the  gentle  reader  of  the  flood  of  German 
theses  started  by  Nissen's  Einquellentheorie? 
How  countless  Roman  and  Greek  writers  were 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.      71 

subjected  to  the  very  "analysis"  of  their  re- 
spective "Quellen/'  or  sources,  that  has  been 
applied  to  the  Bible,  and  with  the  same  result 
of  hopeless  barrenness  and  failure  %  All  scholars 
know  the  farce  of  that  uncouth  erudition  and 
Silbenstecherei. 

The  Pentateuch  (or  Hexateuch,  if  you 
please)  has  been,  as  is  but  too  well  known, 
"analyzed"  into  countless  layers  or  fragments 
(read:  shreds)  raked  together  by  some  one  or 
two  or  X  '^redactors"  from  the  writings  of  a  sup- 
posed chronicler  in  Jerusalem,  1400  or  1200 
B.  C,  called  Jahwist^ ;  and  similarly  from  the 
monographs,  theses,  academic  Probeschriften 
or  political  vTrofi.vrjim.Ta  of  a  Jahwist",  Jah- 
wist*  ..*..*;  and  likewise,  from  the 
private  diaries,  news-cuttings,  and  correspond- 
ence of  Elohist^  Elohist^,  Elohist^ ;  and  also 
from  various  codices  of  priests  in  various  cen- 
turies. The  way  the  various  "redactors"  welded 
all  this  heterogeneous  material  into  an  appar- 
ently uniform  work  was  exceedingly  cunning. 
They  covered  up  the  traces  of  their  compiling 
and  cobbling  activity  in  the  most  raffine  man- 
ner; and  very  frequently  they  used  the  subtlest 
game  of  ricochet  to  send  their  critics  off  the 
right  track.  But,  do  you  not  see,  O  student, 
that  although  the   "redactors,"   and  especially 


72     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

that  arch-editor,  Ezra,  were  people  of  the  most 
Machiavellian  cunning  and  finesse,  yet  the 
"Higher  Critics"  are  quite  up  to  their  tricks. 
They,  the  "Higher  Critics,"  can  not  be  duped ; 
O,  no.  They  see  through  the  holes  and  chinks 
of  their  own  theories,  as  well  as  of  those  of  the 
"redactors,"  wdth  unfailing  certainty.  They 
ferret  out  the  least  little  rabbit  of  literary  dup- 
ery.    There  is  nothing  they  do  not  see. 

The  average  gentleman  has  neither  the  time 
nor  the  patience  to  follow  De  Wette,  Bleek, 
Wellhausen,  Driver,  or  Canon  Cheyne  in  their 
purely  philological  hypercriticism  of  the  text 
of  the  Bible.  There  is,  however,  fortunately 
for  our  present  purpose,  a  most  illuminating  il- 
lustration of  their  methods  in  a  vast  book,  re- 
ferring to  a  modem  author  whose  works,  writ- 
ten in  the  eighteenth  century,  are  subjected  to 
the  very  hypercritical  analysis  of  texts  that  has 
so  "triumphantly"  been  applied  to  the  Bible. 

The  author  is  Lessing;  born  1729,  died  1781. 
All  the  world  knows  Lessing,  or  ought  to  know 
him.  He  is  the  only  German  writer  who,  al- 
though treating,  in  his  prose-works,  of  the  most 
learned  subjects,  was  yet  able  to  write  a  purely 
Hellenic,  singidarly  individual  and  beautiful 
style.  For  reasons  indifferent  to  our  present 
purpose  this  great  glory  of  the  Fatherland  has 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.     73 

during  the  last  twenty-five  years  been  visited 
with  a  morbid  hatred  on  the  part  of  numerous 
Germans.  One  of  them,  Paul  Albrecht — a  most 
learned  philologian,  naturalist,  theologian,  etc., 
and  the  author  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-five 
works  bearing  on  a  variety  of  subjects — pub- 
lished under  the  head-title  "Philologische  TJn- 
tersuchungen,"  an  immense  work,  consisting  of 
2,494  pages  in  large  8vo,  in  which  he  "proves" 
that  all  the  poems  and  dramas  of  Lessing  are 
but  vulgar  plagiarisms  fr(un  innumerable  au- 
thors, Greek,  Latin,  English,  French,  Dutch, 
Spanish,  Portuguese,  Italian,  German,  Swedish, 
etc.,  etc.  He  takes  up  each  drama,  nay,  each 
poem  by  Lessing,  line  by  line,  frequently  word 
by  word,  and  traces  it  invariably  to  some  work 
or  other  of  an  author  of  European  or  even  non- 
European  nationality.  To  enable  himself  to 
carry  out  his  task,  Albrecht  went  through  the 
whole  of  the  ocean  of  dramatic  and  lyrical  lit- 
erature of  Europe  before  and  during  the  eight- 
eenth century,  and  his  familiarity  with  come- 
dies and  tragedies  of  the  century  of  Lessing  is 
nothing  short  of  stupendous.  In  its  way  there 
never  has  been  published  a  more  learned  work, 
a  more  carefully  prepared  and  systematically 
elaborated  book.  Since,  of  course,  he  is  unable 
to  prove  direct  or  evident  plagiarism  in  every 


74     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

case,  Albreclit  has,  quite  in  the  manner  of  the 
Higher  Critics,  laid  down  rules  or  "theories  of 
composition"  (read:  plagiarism)  followed  by 
the  cunning  Lessing.  There  is,  as  with  the 
Higher  Critics,  an  Urkundentheorie^  a  Frag- 
mententheorie,  an  Ergdnzungstheorie ,  a  blend 
of  the  Fraginententheurie  and  the  Ergdnzungs- 
theorie, etc.,  etc.  Xo  matter  how  cunningly  the 
good  Lessing  tried  to  cover  up  the  traces  of  his 
plagiarism,  Albreclit  discovers  them.  If  they 
are  not  plagiarisms  direct  and  palpable,  they 
are,  Albreclit  says,  Plagio-Peplagiomena ;  or 
Paraplagiata ;  or  Onomatoparagoge ;  or  Gene- 
oparagoge,  etc.,  etc.  Thus,  of  ^''Der  junge 
Gelelirie"  {The  Young  Scholar),  a  comedy 
of  Lessing,  Albreclit  literally  says:  "'The 
Young  Scholar^  is  a  /Sdihypomimic  Ero- 
drama,  and  if  we  combine  that  with 
the  Ero)8trimimy  allotted  to  its  Epiparallel,  the 
whole  morphological  value  of  'The  Young 
Scholar,  is  that  of  a  jStriySdihypomimic  Ero- 
draina."  Surely,  nobody  can  ^^^.w^  that;  and 
we  all  agree  with  Albrecht  (for  that  is  what  he 
adds),  "that  the  whole  architectonics  of  this 
dramatic  piece  are  revealed  to  us  in  this  simple 
expression  I"^'^ 

This  is  the  net  result  of  methods  of  Higher 


^"Albrecht,  Lessing' s  Plagiate  (1888),  p.  587. 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.      75 

Criticism  applied  to  a  modern  author.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  Canon  Chejne  will,  after  reading 
Albrecht,  declare,  that  although  he  has  hitherto 
believed  in  the  authorship  of  Lessing's  dramas, 
he  now  can  not  but  say  that  those  dramas  are 
only  )8triy3dihypomimic  Erodramas;  and  ap- 
plying this  simple  term  to  the  Psalms  or  Job,  we 
may  reasonably  hope  to  arrive,  in  the  end,  at  a 
full  understanding  of  the  real  architectonics  of 
these  two  so-called  Biblical  writings. 

It  was  said  above  that  the  method  of  the 
Higher  Critics  in  dealing  with  the  text  of  the 
Bible  is  radically  wrong.  August  Klostermann 
over  twelve  years  ago  pointed  out  the  initial 
fault,  the  false  strategy  of  modern  Bible-crit- 
icism. He  rightly  says"  that  Astruc,  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  inoculated  the  disease, — 
that  is,  the  assumption  of  the  Bible-critics  to  the 
effect,  that  to  "analyze"  the  Hebrew  text  of  the 
Pentateuch  as  we  now  have  it,  is  tantamount  to 
retracing  its  constituent  parts  to  their  original 
authors.  Such  retracing  can  be  done,  and  has 
indeed  been  done  in  the  case  of  mediaeval  chron- 
iclers. The  monk  who  undertook  to  write  a 
world-chronicle  calmly  copied  out  first  Eutro- 
pius,  or  Orosius,  then  a  mediaeval  predecessor, 
then  a  contemporary  writer,  and  finally,  super- 

"  August  Klostermann,  Der  Pentateuch  (1893),  p.  61 


76     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

added  the  news  current  in  his  o^vn  abbey.  Re- 
tracing or  "analyzing"  of  such  compilations  is 
legitimate,  honest,  and  true  work.  All  scholai-s 
are  aware  of  the  feat  of  "retracing"  done  by 
Giesebrecht  respecting  the  Annales  AUahenses 
Tnaiores. 

The  Pentateuch,  however,  is  not  a  mediaeval 
chronicle.  It  was,  as  Klostermann  very  felic- 
itously terms  it,  a  Gemeinde-Lesehucli,  a  popu- 
lar work  of  edification,  in  the  hands  of  every 
one ;  a  blend  of  a  Common  Prayer  Book  and  a 
national  history;  a  singularly  individual  book; 
just  as,  one  may  add,  the  Talmud  is,  in  its  way, 
an  unique  work  both  in  its  form,  in  its  encyclo- 
paedic range,  in  its  spirit.  Such  a  popular 
Gemeinde-Lesehucli  must  necessarily  have  un- 
dergone constant  changes  in  its  verbiage,  style, 
matter.  Too  many  people  handled  it ;  too  many 
copied  it ;  too  many  different  copies  were  extant 
in  the  various  households.  Klostermann  aptly 
refers  to  the  great  changes  that  Lutheran 
hymns  have  undergone  in  a  few  centuries.  Still 
more  cogent  examples  might  be  adduced  from  a 
study  of  Greek  palimpsests;  of  the  various  "re- 
dactions" of  the  Finnish  Kalevala ;  of  the  Ara- 
bic Moallakat  and  other  Oriental  literature,  etc., 
etc.  Under  these  conditions  it  is  mathemat- 
ically certain  that,  even  if  all  the  Bible  critics 


Argument  from  the  Border-Nations.     11 

should  absolutely  agree  as  to  the  authors  of  the 
respective  layers  and  sub-layers  of  the  Bible — 
which,  of  course,  they  are  very  far  from  doing 
— even  then  nothing  would  be  proved  as  to  the 
Pentateuch  being  a  cento.  It  would  not  be 
proved,  because  it  can  not  be  proved.  It  is  like 
asking  a  geometrician  how  many  lines  are  in  a 
plane  of  three  feet  square  ?  lie  can  nut  answer 
the  question.  You  can  not  count  the  number 
of  lines  in  a  plane ;  a  plane  does  not  consist  of 
lines.  In  the  same  way,  a  popular  book  of  edu- 
cation, going  through  an  untold  number  of  copy- 
ists and  generations,  undergoing  the  gi'eatest 
possible  changes  in  form  and  structure,  if  not 
also  in  its  religious  and  historical  essentials, 
can  not  now  be  reconstructed  into  its  original 
constituent  parts.  I^ot  now;  for  we  have  at 
present  only  one  of  the  latest  versions  of  that 
text,  and  not  a  cento  patched  up  from  the  works 
of  the  original  author,  or  authors. 

The  dilemma,  the  inextricable  dilemma,  for 
the  Bible  critics  stands  therefore  as  follows : 

If  the  Pentateuch  be  a  cento  or  patchwork 
from  numerous  authors,  we  can  not,  at  the  pres- 
ent jieriod,  possibly  go  back  as  far  as  the  real, 
the  original  authors;  in  that  we  do  x^ot  possess 
a  Pentateuch  containing  compilations  from  the 
original  authors;  but  only  a  Pentateuch  con- 


78     Tlis  Failut'e  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

taining  versions  of  compilations  from  compila- 
tions compiled  from  other  compilations  from 
authors,  the  very  last  ones  of  whom  only,  now 
long  lost,  were  the  original  authors. 

If  the  Pentateuch  is  not,  or  is  not  essentially, 
a  cento,  then  modern  Bible  criticism  is  alto- 
gether wrong  and  futile. 

Hie  Rliodus,  hie  salta. 

The  philological  historians  totally  misunder- 
stand the  most  fundamental  character  of  all 
classical  history;  i.  e.,  that  of  the  Hebrews, 
Phoenicians,  Hellenes,  and  Romans.  This  char- 
acter consists  in  the  fact  that  all  classical  history 
is  cephalic ;  it  is  grafted  upon  and  living  in  Per- 
sonality. Pre-classical  history  knows  only  of 
Persons;  classical  history  knows,  for  the  first 
time  in  history,  of  Personalities.  This  cephalic 
character  is  all-decisive,  all-important.  It  is 
the  soul  of  classical  antiquity.  Now,  what  have 
the  philologians  and  the  philological  historians 
done  these  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ?  They 
have,  in  the  most  absurd  manner,  attempted  to 
shut  out  from  classical  history  the  very  essence 
thereof:  Personality.  Moses,  David,  Lycurgus, 
Theseus,  Romulus,  Homer,  etc.,  etc., — they  are 
all  myths.  Of  course,  they  are  all  the  most  real 
beings  in  history.       Philological  or  "Higher" 


ArguTnent  from  the  Border- Nations.     79 

Critics  can  not  see  the  broadest,  plainest,  and 
most  important  fact  of  classical  antiquity,  that 
glorious  Chain  of  Personalities  from  Moses  to 
Csesar,  who,  bj  establishing  cephalic  States, 
made  it  possible  that  the  Universal  Church  was 
finally  introduced  by  one  Personality  gTeater 
than  all  the  rest. 


CHAPTEE  III. 

The  Akgument  from  the  Method.      The  In- 
quisitorial Principle. 


CHAPTER  III. 

The   Argument    from    the   Method.      The 
Inquisitorial  Principle. 

It  is  difficult  to  refute  Higher  Criticism,  or 
rather  to  confute  the  Higher  Critic.  He  is,  as 
will  presently  be  seen,  not  in  a  position  to  grasp 
the  force  of  the  powerful  arguments  militating 
against  his  views.  He  is  like  a  person  abso- 
lutely devoid  of  any  musical  ear,  at  a  concert. 
Such  an  individual  really  docs  not  hear  the 
music  played;  he  only  perceives  incoherent, 
hence  disagreeable  noises.  No  wonder  he  dis- 
likes music.  He  has  never  heard  music  qua 
music ;  he  has  heard  a  din.  The  Higher  Critic 
is  fundamentally  vitiated  by  his  angle  of  view- 
ing, by  his  manner  of  looking  at  things;  in 
short,  by  his  method.  The  historians  of  Science 
or  of  Philosophy  have  long  established  that  one 
of  the  most  formidable  obstacles  in  the  way  of 
scientific  progress  is  the  application  of  a  false 
method.  Whether  Bacon  was  or  was  not  right 
in  holding  that  by  means  of  the  right  method  a 
83 


84     The  Failu7'e  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

mediocre  talent  maj  in  the  end  equal  a  genius, 
it  remains  certain  that  the  use  of  a  wrong 
method  has,  sometimes  for  centuries,  crippled 
the  advance  of  knowledge.  It  can  not  be 
doubted  that  when  a  given  research  requires  the 
careful  use  of  the  Method  of  Comparison,  or 
that  of  direct  Experimenting;  no  other  method, 
ever  so  subtle  and  careful,  will  do.  Statistics 
based  on  non-comparative  methods;  physiology 
studied  departmentally ;  economics  based  on 
mathematical  theorems  alone,  etc.,  etc., — all  this 
can  but  end  in  failure. 

Having  shown  the  failure  of  Higher  Criti- 
cism from  other  standpoints,  we  must  now  ap- 
proach our  subject  from  the  standpoint  of 
Method.  We  are  going  to  prove  that  the  fail- 
ure of  that  pernicious  attempt  to  drain  the  Bible 
of  all  its  inestimable  value  is  based  on  a  method 
as  wrong,  as  unscientific,  as  untrue,  as  was  that 
of  botany  in  the  sixteenth,  or  that  of  chemistry 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  This  is  indeed  a 
point  of  the  utmost  importance.  By  far  the 
majority  of  the  public  bow  to  Higher  Criti- 
cism out  of  a  vague  yet  very  strong  feeling  of 
awe  caused  by  the  alleged  scientific  character  of 
that  criticism.  People  really  do  think  that 
Higher  Criticism  is  part  of  that  undoubted 
scientific  progress    in  which   we  moderns    all 


Argument  from  the  Method.  85 

glory ;  of  which  all  of  ns,  without  distinction  of 
party,  are  so  proud.  Higher  Criticism  is  viewed 
by  these  misguided  souls  in  the  light  of  Evolu- 
tionism, of  the  marvelous  new  departure  in  the 
science  of  electricity,  or  the  latest  advance  made 
in  chemistry.  The  sad  truth  is  that  Higher 
Criticism  is  an  act  of  retrograde,  decadent 
science ;  an  act,  a  method  long  condemned  and 
laughed  at  in  various  other  branches  of  histor- 
ical and  legal  study.  This  can  fortunately  be 
rendered  as  clear  as  daylight  by  a  closer  consid- 
eration of  the  method  of  Higher  Criticism.  We 
now  invite  the  fair-minded  student  to  an  exam- 
ination of  that  method. 

Before  giving  this  method  of  Higher  Crit- 
icism its  proper  technical  name,  we  are  bound 
to  premise  a  few  remarks  on  the  true  nature  of 
the  real  and  ultimate  object  of  Higher  Crit- 
icism. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  Higher  Critics  have, 
from  Father  Simon  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  the  physician  Astruc  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury (both  Frenchmen),  to  He  Wette,  Eduard 
Reuss,  Bleek,  Graf,  Kuenen,  Bishop  Colenso, 
Wellhausen,  and  several  modern  British  schol- 
ars, essayed  to  prove  in  books  of  an  apparently 
imposing  erudition  and  "scientific"  precision, 
that  the  Pentateuch,  amongst  other  portions  of 


86     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

the  Old  Testament,  consists  of  various  layers 
of  old,  young,  or  fabricated  documents,  written 
by  various  post-Mosaic  Hebrews,  such  as  the 
^'Elohist"  (designated  E.),  the  "Jahwist"  (J.), 
the  second  ''Elohist"  (E.  2),  the  ''Deuterono- 
mist"  (D.),  respectively;  and  was  finally  de- 
liberately "harmonized"  by  the  priests  about 
444  B.  C,  Ezra  and  Xehemiah  having  the 
greatest  share  in  the  "codification."  The  num- 
ber of  these  alleged  authors  of  the  Pentateuch, 
as  well  as  the  mutual  relations  of  their  respec- 
tive writings,  have,  by  the  said  critics  and  their 
followers,  been  varied  and  multiplied  in  infini- 
tum. According  to  their  view,  the  Hebrews 
previous  to  the  eighth  century  B.  C.  were  little, 
if  at  all,  above  the  ordinary  paganism  of  their 
neighbors,  the  Moabites,  Philistines,  Amalek- 
ites,  etc.  Their  sojourn  in  Egypt,  the  existence 
of  Moses,  the  Exodus,^  the  conquest  of  Canaan, 
— all  this,  most  critics  say,  is  highly  problem- 
atic.     Wlien,   however,   the   Assyrians   invaded 

^  One  of  the  latest  and  most  sober  statements  about 
the  measure  of  information  so  far  discovered  in  an- 
cient Egyptian  texts  about  Israel,  Moses,  the  Exodus, 
etc.,  will  be  found  in  Recueilde  Travaux,  etc., for  1902, 
pp.  121,  sq.  No  known  Egyptian  text  speaks  of  Israel- 
ites in  Egypt ;  ib.  p.  124.  An  ancient  Egyptian  text, 
discovei'ed  by  Professor  Flinders  Petrie,  speaks  of  Is- 
rael in  Palestine  (Contemporary  Review,  May,  1896 ; 
Revue  Archeologique ,  1896,  ii,  p.  120.) 


Argument  frorrh  the  Method.  87 

Israel,  Amos  and  Hosea  addressed  the  Hebrews 
with  signal  success ;  so  much  so  that  the  He- 
brews readily  changed  their  heathenish,  heno- 
theist  belief  in  Jahwe  to  a  true  belief  in  one 
ethical  God.  Amos  and  Hosea,  it  will  be  no- 
ticed, are  thus  credited  with  instilling  in  a 
crude  nation  a  belief  which  none  of  the  Greek 
sages  ever  hoped  to  succeed  in  imparting  to  the 
civilized  Hellenes.  After  this  successful  in- 
vention of  Monotheism,  the  codifiers  of  the  next 
century  "edited"  Deuteronomy  in  621  B.  C. ; 
and  at  last  Judaism,  as  it  has  existed  to  the 
present  day,  was  manufactured  by  a  bland  cour- 
tier, ^STehemiah,  who  prevailed  on  the  good-na- 
tured king  of  Persia  graciously  to  allow  him, 
Nehemiah,  the  floating  of  Judaism.  Thus 
Judaism  was  established  after  the  manner  of 
a  lying-in  hospital  or  an  orphanage. 

If  the  preceding  statements  of  the  Higher 
Critics  are  put  into  plain  English,  they  can 
mean  but  one  thing,  to-wit,  that  the  Pentateuch 
is  practically  a  forgery.  Some  Higher  Critics, 
it  is  true,  afraid  lest  the  ultimate  results  of 
their  investigations  should  shock  the  pious  of 
the  land  too  violently,  have  repeatedly  at- 
tempted to  declare  and  show  that,  although  their 
"scientific"  conscience  does  not  permit  them  to 
revoke  the  "well-ascertained"  results  of  Higher 


88     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

Criticism,  yet  they,  the  critics,  do  not  in  the 
least  mean  to  cast  any  doubt  whatever  upon  the 
inspiration,  sanctity,  and  religious  sacredness 
of  the  Bible.  In  other  words,  to  speak  German, 
such  Higher  Critics  want  to  wash  the  fur  with- 
out making  it  wet.  It  is  hardly  credible  that 
any  person  of  common  sense  can  be  taken  in  by 
such  a  childish  procedure.  He  who  believes 
that  the  Pentateuch  is  practically  a  concoction 
of  the  seventh  and  fifth  centuries  B.  C,  and 
not  the  work  of  Moses  in  the  fourteenth  or  thir- 
teenth century  B,  C,  does  thereby  explicitly 
admit  that  the  Pentateuch  is  a  forgery,  and  that 
therefore  the  Pentateuch  can  not  possibly  be  re- 
garded as  an  integral  portion  of  a  Holy  Book 
revealing  to  us  a  religion  vouchsafed  to  the 
Israelites  by  Providence  in  a  definite  place  and 
at  a  definite  time.  Tcrtium  ^lon  datur.  No 
logical  fence  can  enable  a  man  to  wriggle  out 
of  the  meshes  of  this  inexorable  alternative.  It 
is  here,  at  this  juncture  of  the  debate,  quite  un- 
necessary to  refer  to  the  testimony  of  the  Savior 
Himself,  who  formally  and  repeatedly  recog- 
nized the  Pentateuch  and  the  Prophets  as  the 
authoiitic  works  of  Moses  and  the  God-inspired 
leaders  of  His  nation.  It  is  quite  sufiicient  to 
point  out  the  inherent  contradiction  in  terms 
in   the  stateuicut  of  those   who,   while  tearing 


Argument  from  the  Method.  89 

down  every  wall,  column,  and  pillar  of  the  Sa- 
cred House,  still  continue  to  pretend  that  they 
do  not  in  the  least  attempt  to  interfere  with  its 
quality  as  an  inhabitable  building.  This  strange 
section  of  Higher  Critics  does  indeed  advance 
that  Higher  Criticism  is  only  an  investigation 
of  the  text,  the  authorship,  the  time  and  place 
of  origin  of  the  various  books  of  the  Old  and 
]^ew  Testament.  From  this  apparently  inno- 
cent occupation  with  mere  words,  names,  chron- 
ological and  topological  questions  no  inference 
can  be  drawn,  these  gentlemen  contend,  with 
regard  to  their  intention  of  destroying  the  doc- 
trinal portion  of  the  Bible.  However,  as  will 
be  seen  presently,  no  one  can  so  much  as  hope 
to  separate  verbal  and  chronological  criticism 
from  criticism  historical.  The  meritorious  and 
the  formal  are  indissolubly  united  in  these  ques- 
tions. You  can  not  have  a  right  view  of  the 
text,  authorship,  and  date  of,  say,  the  Book  of 
Kings,  and  yet  continue  to  have  a  wrong  his- 
torical view  of  the  events  and  institutions  of 
the  period  of  Kings.  If  you  believe,  as  most 
Higher  Critics  do,  that  there  never  was  an 
Exodus,  hence  that  there  never  was  a  Moses, 
then  you  can  not  possibly  treat  the  text-criticism 
of  the  Book  called  Exodus  in  the  right  manner 
either.     What  would  Professor  Lindsay,  of  St. 


90     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

Andrew's  University,  say  to  a  critic  of  the  text 
of  Plautus  (of  the  second  century  B.  C.)  who 
would  start  with  the  assumption  that  the  come- 
dies of  that  Roman  were  written  in  the  fourth 
century  after  Christ  ?  Or,  suppose  a  modern 
critic  started  with  the  conviction  that  Hamlet 
or  Richard  III  was  really  written  by  Chaucer 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  because  the  assump- 
tion of  the  existence  of  one  William  Shake- 
speare in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies was  much  too  absurd.  Could  that  per- 
son ever  hope  to  edit  Shakespeare  correctly  ? 

It  is  indeed  for  this  very  separation  of  phil- 
ological from  historical  criticism  that  most  of 
the  immense  amount  of  work  of  modem  philo- 
logical critics,  whether  in  the  sphere  of  Bible 
criticism  or  in  that  of  Grseco-Roman  antiquity, 
has  been  absolutely  sterile.  It  is  as  impossible 
to  "criticise"  text,  autliorship,  and  period  of 
the  various  books  of  the  Bible  by  the  aid  of 
purely  philological  methods  of  research  as  it  is 
to  criticise  facts  of  physics  by  the  aid  of  merely 
mathematical  methods  of  investigation.  Both 
need  the  lifegiving  control  of  Reality,  which 
in  the  former  case  is  called  History,  in  the  lat- 
ter Experiment. 

If,  then,  the  pretended  text-criticism  of  the 
Bible  is  not  and  can  nut  bo  made  independent  of 


Argument  from  the  Method.  91 

historic  construction,  then  it  is,  by  implication, 
impossible  to  admit  that  he  who  apparently  only 
criticises  the  text,  does  not  at  the  same  time 
touch  upon  the  religion  contained  in  the  Bible. 
That  religion  is  based  on  a  series  of  facts.  It 
is  not  an  abstract  chain  of  metaphysical  doc- 
trines. It  is  wound  up  with  a  series  of  great, 
ever-memorable  facts.  Moses  is  not  only  a 
name,  he  is  an  event ;  an  event  of  the  very  great- 
est significance ;  he  has  indeed  long  become  a 
vast  institution.  From  being  at  first  only  a  per- 
son, he  became  a  Personality,  aftenvards  an 
Event,  and  finally  a  religious  Institution.  He 
who  does  not  see  that,  is  unable  to  seize  or  grasp 
the  elements  of  either  history  or  religion.  For 
him,  Moses  is  probably  an  ancient  emigration 
agent  or  a  trekl-er.  It  is  even  so  with  the 
Judges,  the  Kings,  the  Prophets.  They  are  not 
only  men  who  lived  once  upon  a  time,  and  did 
various  things  good,  bad,  and  indifferent.  This 
is  the  view  of  philologians  who  are  accustomed 
to  deal  with  words  only;  that  is,  with  things 
between  which  there  is,  per  se,  no  great  differ- 
ence whatever.  But  to  the  student  of  history 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  difference  between  a 
Hebrew  prophet  and  an  Assyrian  or  Babylonian 
seer.  The  prophets  of  Israel  were  at  once  re- 
ligious phenomena  and  historical  events.     They 


92     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism.. 

were,  to  use  Roman  law-terms,  both,  res  juris 
and  res  facti.  It  was  not  only  their  teaching  in 
the  abstract,  but  also  their  preaching  in  the 
concrete,  that  went  to  constitute  them  what  they 
were.  One  may  be  quite  indifferent  to  the  time 
when  Spinoza's  Ethica  was  published;  one  may 
very  well  ignore  that  time  altogether,  without 
losing  a  particle  of  the  value  of  some  of  the  ideas 
of  the  great  thinker.  His  work  is  a  book  in  the 
abstract;  it  gains,  rather  than  loses,  when  de- 
tached from  its  accidental  surroundings  in  seven- 
teenth-century Holland.  jSJot  so  the  Prophets. 
Theirs  is,  in  addition  to  an  internal  and  imper- 
ishable value,  a  distinct  place  in  time  and  space. 
They  are  both  thought  and  deed ;  they  are  per- 
sons and  facts:  to  separate  these  two  powers  is 
impossible.  Had  Moses  not  done  what  he  did,  he 
could  not  have  taught  what  lie  taught.  Had  Ly- 
curgus  not  guaranteed  the  political  independ- 
ence and  power  of  Sparta  against  the  neighbor- 
ing ])riiices  and  peoples  of  Messene,  Tegea,  Ar- 
gos,  etc.,  he  would  not,  and  could  not,  have 
taught  his  famous  system  of  national  education 
as  he  did.  This  system  is  not  the  result  of  idle 
construction  and  scheming  in  the  abstract,  such 
as  many  a  schoolmaster  has  indulged  in,  in  his 
study.  It  is  the  necessary  outcome  of  a  highly 
endangered  position  of  a  nation.     The  philolog- 


ArguTnent  from  the  Method.  93 

ical  historian  who  is  unacquainted  with  Reality, 
looks  upon  Lycurgus  as  he  does  upon  Madame 
la  diredrice  of  a  high  school  for  young  ladies. 
This  enables  him  to  deprive  poor  Lycurgus  of 
the  most  positive  advantage  the  great  Spartan 
ever  had:  historical  existence.  In  the  same 
way,  then,  Moses  and  the  Prophets  are  treated. 
It  is  ignored  that  their  teachings  are  one  and 
the  same  thing  with  their  doings;  it  is  over- 
looked that  should  any  one  prove  that  they  never 
did  what  they  are  said  to  have  done,  then  their 
teachings  would  be  the  greatest  of  all  miracles, 
the  least  comprehensible  things  in  the  world. 
What  they  taught,  and  the  way  they  taught  it, 
can  not  be  picked  up  in  any  sleepy  corner  of 
an  Oriental  bazaar.  In  their  thoughts  there  are 
the  tears  of  the  greatest  national  anguish,  the 
desperate  longings  of  exiles  and  outlaws,  the 
deep  insight  into  life  given  only  by  intense  na- 
tional suffering  and  national  grandeur. 

It  thus  remains  incontestable  that  as  philolog- 
ical or  "merely"  textual  criticism  of  the  Bible 
can  not  be  separated  from  criticism  historical, 
even  so  historical  criticism  of  the  Bible  can  not 
be  separated  from  criticism  religious.  They, 
therefore,  that  deny  or  question  the  received 
authorship,  text,  and  dates  of  the  books  of  the 
Bible — i.   e.,  the   Higher   Critics — do  thereby 


94     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

declare  that  the  Bible  is  a  forgery.  It  is  with 
them  as  it  is  with  M.  Hochartj  who  holds  that 
Tacitus  was  not  written  by  Tacitus  in  the  sec- 
ond century  A.  D.,  but  by  Poggio  Bracciolini, 
a  well-known  Italian  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
A.  D.^  For  M.  Hochart,  the  Tacitus  that  we 
now  possess  is  a  forgery.  Nothing  short  of  this 
term  can  possibly  be  used.  It  is  hopeless  to 
look  for  another  term  in  the  case  of  criticism  a 
la  Hochart  when  applied  to  the  Bible.  The 
Bible,  and  certainly  the  Old  Testament,  which 
has  so  far  received  more  attention  on  the  part  of 
the  Higher  Critics  in  England  and  America 
than  has  the  Xew  Testament, — the  Old  Testa- 
ment is,  by  Higher  Criticism,  declared  to  be 
a  forgery. 

Now,  forgery  is  a  crime.  The  question,  then, 
whether  the  Higher  Critics  have  or  have  not 
made  good  their  case,  is  eminently  a  question 
of  evidence  and  proof  in  criminal  procedure. 
It  is  a  question  referring  to  the  law  of  crimes 
and  criminal  procedure.  This,  as  every  one 
knows,  is  one  of  those  matters  regarding  which 
we  have,  in  the  last  hundred  and  fifty  years, 

*  Hochart,  De  V authenticite  des  Annates  et  des  His- 
toires  de  Tacite  (Paris,  1890) ;  and  Nouvelles  consider a- 
tions  au  sujet  d.  Annalcs  et  d.  Hist,  de  Tacite  (Paris, 
1894).  See  contra:  Tannery,  Annates  de  ta  Faculte  de 
Bordeaux  (1890,  1891). 


Argument  from  the  Method.  95 

made  some  undeniable  progress.  This  progress 
is  very  much  more  perceptible  on  the  Continent 
than  in  England.  In  the  latter  country  crim- 
inal procedure  was  at  all  times  very  much  less 
tainted  with  the  abominable  vices  of  criminal 
procedure  on  the  Continent  during  the  sixteenth, 
seventeenth,  and  most  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
turies. The  progress  and  reforms  made  in 
modern  criminal  law  and  procedure  stand  out, 
therefore,  much  more  plastically  in  Continental 
history.  The  vices  here  referred  to  have  long 
been  summed  up  under  the  name  of  "inquisito- 
rial procedure."  It  was  a  criminal  procedure 
which,  in  the  face  of  all  elementary  fairness 
and  justice,  started  with  the  assumption  of 
guilt  on  the  part  of  the  accused.  The  judge 
was  party,  barrister,  juror,  and  judge,  all  in 
one  person;  he  cross-examined,  he  accepted  or 
refused  witnesses;  he  used  the  terrible  method 
of  proof  by  indicia,  or  mere  symptoms,  vague 
interpretations  of  facts,  arbitrary  assumptions, 
and  what  was  called  prcesumptiones  juris. 
When  all  the  resources  of  diabolical  insinuation 
seemed  to  fail,  then  recourse  was  had  to  torture ; 
and  it  is  superfluous  to  show  how,  under  these 
circumstances,  no  man,  once  accused  of  a  crime, 
more  particularly  of  the  crime  of  sorcery  and 
witchcraft,  could  possibly  escape  the  claws  of 


96     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

the  senseless  and  pitiless  judge  of  that  time. 
For  such  an  accused  there  was  no  help  on  earth, 
except,  as  occasionally  happened,  that  he  was 
able  to  stand  all  the  fiendish  pain  of  the  rack 
without  formally  admitting  that  he  or  she  was 
a  sorcerer  or  witch.^ 

The  odium,  injustice,  and  inhumanity  of 
that  inquisitorial  method  of  criminal  procedure 
can  not  be  described  in  general  terms.  One 
must  read  the  acts  of  witch-trials.  One  has  to 
descend  into  the  fearful  dungeons,  where,  by 
the  aid  of  that  method,  old  and  young  women, 
nay,  girls  six  years  old,  were  tortured  on  the 
plea  of  being  witches.  One  woman  was  tri- 
umphantly "convicted"  of  the  heinous  crime, 
because  in  the  third  house  from  hers  a  child  had 
died  of  a  mysterious  illness.  It  was  evident, 
the  inquisitorial  judge  said,  that  the  child  died 
because  the  woman  had  bewitched  her.  On  the 
wretched  woman's  pointing  out  to  the  judge 
that  she  had  never  seen  that  child,  and  that  in 
the  same  house  another  child  had  recovered 
about  the  same  time  from  the  same  mysterious 
illness,  the  judge,  quoting  abundantly  from  the 

8In  a  powerful  novel,  "The  Long  Night,"  Mr. 
Stanley  Weyman  has  given  us  a  most  dramatic  and 
historically  true  picture  of  the  social  and  moral  atmos- 
phere of  the  times  when  witch-trials  and  the  inquisi- 
torial method  were  rife  all  over  Europe. 


Argume7it  from  the  Method.  97 

great  masters  of  higher  criminal  criticism  of 
the  time,  from  Clarus,  Farinacius,  Damhouder, 
and  others,  declared,  that  the  recovery  of  the 
other  child  was  proof  conclusive  of  the  witchery 
of  the  accused;  for,  had  the  mysterious  illness 
been  curable,  then  both  children  would  have  re- 
covered. Since  only  one  recovered,  it  is  sole 
clarius,  that  the  deceased  child  was  the  only  one 
whom  the  accused  wanted  to  bewitch.* 

All  this  is  pretty  well  known,  and  the  litera- 
ture of  the  inquisitorial  criminal  procedure  in 
general,  and  that  of  the  witch-trials  in  particu- 
lar, is  exceedingly  ample  and  elaborate.  It  is, 
however,  far  less  known  how  the  age  of  the  Re- 
naissance and  the  Reformation,  the  times  of 
Copernicus,  Bacon,  Kepler,  Descartes,  Spinoza, 
Leibnitz,  and  Newton  came  to  be  disgraced  by 
atrocities  that,   on  the  whole,  were  absolutely 

<It  is  well  known  that  the  mother  of  the  great 
astronomer,  Kepler,  was  accused  of  witchcraft,  and 
had  to  undergo  the  ordeal  of  a  criminal  accusation 
launched  against  her,  ex  officio,  by  the  tribunal  of 
Leonberg,  in  Wttrtemberg,  in  1620.  In  the  edition  of 
Kepler's  works  by  Ch.  Frisch  (vol.  viii,  pars  1,  pp., 
361-562),  there  is  a  reprint  of  all  the  roiwZ?',  decrees, 
and  acts  passed  in  that  trial.  As  Frisch  rightly  says, 
"  Nulla  (causa  capitalis  contra  sagas)  comparari  possit 
cum  hac,  .  .  .  quia  res  tola  contra  usum  receptum 
per  literas  agebatur,"—so  that  we  have  the  complete 
material  of  the  depositions  of  witnesses,  pleadings, 
decrees,  arguments,  and  counter-arguments  of  this 
7 


98     The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

and  relatively  rare  in  the  Middle  Ages  proper. 
With  here  and  there  a  temporary  exception,  the 
Middle  Ages,  or  more  correctly  speaking  the 
period  from  the  eighth  to  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury inclusive,  were  practically  free  from  both 
the  inquisitorial  procedure  and  witch-trials  en 
masse  in  particular.  Trials  for  heresy  were 
indeed  conducted  after  a  procedure  essentially 
inquisitorial  in  character.  But  other  crimes 
were  submitted  to  courts  of  law  in  which  the 
inquisitorial  principle  was  unknown.  To  what 
circumstance  or  historical  cause,  then,  shall  we 
ascribe  the  rise  of  that  inquisitorial  procedure 
which    martyrized    innumerable    innocent    vic- 


typical  case.  He  who  is  well  acquainted  with  the 
tone  and  trend  of  the  arguments  current  in  the  works 
of  the  Higher  Critics  of  the  Bible  can  not  read  this 
reprint  of  a  witch-trial  without  being  more  than  once 
struck  with  the  appalling  similarity,  in  point  of 
mental  procedure,  of  the  trial  of  the  Bible  with  the 
trial  of  the  mother  of  the  great  astronomer.  The 
public  prosecutor,  who  is  bent  on  bringing  the  old 
woman  to  the  peinliche  Frage,  or  torture,  uses  the  very 
kind  of  arguments  that  have  served  the  "Higher 
Critics"  to  lacerate  the  author  of  the  Pentateuch, 
Thus,  in  order  to  show,  "conclusively  and  irrefu- 
tably," that  the  old  woman  must  be  subjected  to  the 
"question" — ?'.  c,  the  torture — the  public  prosecutor 
points  out  her  "  variatio  et  inronstantia  ;"  that,  he  says. 
The  Kupplerin  was  inconstant,  contradictory ,  and  vary- 
ing in  the  use  of  Iier  words  {dass  die  Kupplerin  in  ihren 
Reden  ohnbestdndig,  wankelmutig  und  in  denselbcn 
variere);  just  as  the  "  Higher  Critics  "  start  with  the 


Argument  from  the  Method.  99 

tims  in  the  name  of  Law  ?  To  this  question  the 
strangest  answers  have  been  hazarded.  Here 
is  not  the  place  to  discuss  them.  Here  it  may 
suffice  to  state  that  the  ignominious  procedure 
was  observed  in  Catholic  and  Protestant  coun- 
tries alike,  and  for  over  two  hundred  years.  It 
seemed  to  be  so  deeply  rooted  as  some  immova- 
ble institution  or  idea  of  the  times  that  the 
noble  men  who  first  combated  it  in  the  eight- 
eenth century  were  considered  to  be  lunatics. 
As  late  as  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  no 
less  civilized  a  country  than  France  still  re- 
tained an  atrocious  remnant  of  that  procedure 
in  the  rights  of  a  French    'yuge  d' instruct  ion; 

♦'inconstant,  contradictory,  and  varying"  use  of  the 
Hebrew  terms  for  the  Godhead  in  Genesis.  And  as 
the  Wiirttemberg  public  prosecutor  in  1620  comes  to 
the  conclusion,  fortified  by  ample  quotations  from  the 
criminalistic  works  of  Clarus,  Zanger,  Carerius,  and 
Bodinus,  that  ex  variatione  autem  et  inconstantia  ser- 
monis  judicium  oriri  ad  torturam  (in  Kepler's  Opera, 
ed.  Frisch  viii.  1,  p.  512),  even  so  the  "Higher 
Critics,"  quoting  profusely  from  one  another  and  their 
predecessors  in  the  eighteenth  century,  arrive  at  the 
conclusion  that  Moses  was  not  the  author  of  the 
essential  portions  of  the  Pentateuch,  and,  accord- 
ingly, that  he  must  be  put  to  the  "  question  "  in  order 
to  make  him  reveal  the  real  authors.  When,  however, 
the  "Kupplerin"  points  out  to  the  prosecutor  that 
the  witnesses  bearing  out  his  contention  are  also  con- 
tradicting themselves,  and  that  therefore  their  testi- 
mony ought  not  to  pass  for  complete  and  convincing, 
then  the  public  prosecutor  retorts  that  such  "  slight" 


100  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

and  various  traces  thereof  may  be  discovered 
even  now  in  the  criminal  procedure  of  the  Ger- 
man Empire  and  of  Austria. 

The  cause  and  historic  motive  of  the  rise  and 
long  continuance  of  the  horrible  method  called 
inquisitorial  procedure  we  take  to  be  the  rise 
and  continuance  of  "learned"  or  arm-chair 
judges,  apj)ointed  for  life  by  the  Princes.  Pre- 
vious to  the  fifteenth  century,  judgment, 
whether  in  civil  or  in  criminal  cases,  was,  on 
the  Continent,  given,  as  a  rule,  by  free  bur- 
gesses, scablni,  ^choeffen,  consules  de  placitis, 
or  whatever  their  titles  may  have  been.  They 
were  neither  Doctors  of  Law  nor  appointed  for 
life ;  they  were  neither  "learned  men"  nor  arm- 
chair scholars.  They  were  free  men,  steeped  in 
the  realities  of  life,  knowing  what  human  na- 
ture generally  means,  and  therefore  more  con- 
servative and  conciliatory  than  doctrinaire  or 
severe.      When,    however,    the  Italian  doctors 


contradictions  in  the  depositions  of  the  same  witness 
or  of  tlie  incriminating  witnesses  must  not  be  taken 
any  notice  of;  for,  he  adds,  est  enim  prudentis  provi- 
dique  jiidicis,  testiuvi  dicta  conrilinre,  iit  valeant  potius 
quam  pereant!  Can  anything  bo  more  similar  to  the 
way  in  which  *' Higher  Critics"  at  once  insist  upon 
certain,  and  neglect  certain  other,  "contradictions" 
in  the  Bible  according  to  the  measure  in  which  these 
contradictions  favor  or  do  not  favor  the  preconceived 
theories  of  those  critics? 


Argument  from  ike  MetJiod.  101 

brought  their  new  arm-chair  lore  of  law  into 
country  after  country ;  when  the  Doctores,  Glos- 
satores,  Domini  of  Bologna,  Padua,  Pisa,  etc., 
established  the  profession  of  ^'learned"  judges — 
that  is,  of  men  who,  after  a  more  or  less  pro- 
longed theoretic  study  of  Roman  law,  were 
pitchforked  into  the  chairs  of  judges,  there  to 
pronounce  on  the  legal  relations  of  a  life  diamet- 
rically opposed  to  the  life  of  ancient  Rome — 
then  came  the  inevitable  disaster.  The  ''learned 
judges,"  disdaining  the  legal  folklore  or  popular 
law  of  their  country,  soon  manifested  that  acer- 
bity of  self-assertion  so  peculiar  to  bureaucrats. 
To  raise  the  dignity  and  power  of  their  other- 
wise poorly  salaried  offices,  they  were  not  long 
in  discovering  the  immense  leverage  which  the 
method  of  insinuation,  oblique  cross-examina- 
tion, proof  per  indicia,  and  finally  the  torture, 
was  bound  to  place  in  their  hands.  With  the 
instinct  of  ruthless  class-ambition,  secretly  coun- 
tenanced by  the  prevailing  absolutism  of  the 
Princes  whose  ready  instruments  they  were,  the 
''learned  judges"  very  soon  built  up  a  massive 
and  incredibly  intricate  system  of  inquisitorial 
procedure,  which  placed  in  their  hands  a  weapon 
so  extraordinary  that  no  person  in  the  country 
could  afford  to  trifle  with  them.  No  wonder 
they  sedulously  elaborated  their  engine  of  sue- 


102  Tlie  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

cess,  surrounding  it  with  all  the  appearances  of 
learning,  the  pageantry  of  public  magistracies, 
and  the  terrors  of  irresistible  retribution.  One 
has  only  to  look  for  a  while  at  the  portrait  of  a 
man  like  Carpzov  of  Saxony.  What  a  terror  of 
a  face  !  What  boundless  arrogance !  What  re- 
lentless cocksureness ! 

We  here  submit  that  the  same  thing  that  hap- 
pened to  criminal  law  proper  in  the  period  when 
its  administration  was  intrusted  exclusively  to 
"learned"  judges,  or  arm-chair  scholars — this 
very  same  and  most  pernicious  thing  has  hap- 
pened, and  always  will  happen,  to  any  and  every 
subject  of  real  life,  whether  law  or  any  other  re- 
search, whenever  it  will  be  exclusively  handled 
by  men  unacquainted  with  the  realities  of  life, 
and  trained  only  for  a  purely  abstract  and  bu- 
reaucratic mode  of  thought.  In  every  case  of 
that  kind  a  method  has  been  introduced  by  the 
arm-chair  scholar  which  is  essentially  identical 
with  the  method  of  the  inquisitorial  procedure. 
If  the  subject  be  that  of  History,  no  actual  per- 
sons are  tortured.  But  the  persons,  events,  in- 
i  stitutions  of  the  past,  are  subjected  to  the  very 
I  same  method  of  insinuatio^n,  proleptic  proof, 
>  evidence  per  indicia,  etc.,  that,  when  applied  to 
'(  living  persons  accused  of  a  crime,  has  led,  and 
was  bound  to  lead,  to  the  vilest  abuse  of  law  of 


ArguTThent  from  the  Method.  103 

all  times.  Tor  it  is  superfluous  to  show  that 
neither  the  Greeks  nor  the  free  Romans  dis- 
honored themselves  by  the  application  of  the  in- 
quisitorial principle.  ISTor  did  they  have 
"learned"  judges. 

On  going  somewhat  more  deeply  into  the 
matter,  we  can  not  but  see  that  all  the  condi- 
tions that  combined  to  precipitate  the  rise  of  the 
inquisitorial  method  in  criminal  jurisdiction 
have  been  at  work  in  the  introduction  of  the 
same  method  to  the  study  of  History,  Theology, 
or  Archaeology  in  the  last  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  especially  on  the  Continent.  It  is  well 
known  that  particularly  in  Germany  the 
"learned"  studies  proper — i.  e..  Philology,  His- 
tory, or  Theology — are  almost  exclusively  in 
the  hands  of  professional,  arm-chair  scholars, 
or  professors.  Their  posts  they  obtain  by  pon- 
derous treatises ;  their  fame  is  based  on  books  of 
heavy  erudition ;  their  horizon,  their  basis,  hope, 
and  joy  are  determined  by  books,  and  nothing 
but  books.  They  are,  in  fact  the  Doctores  and 
Glossatores  of  our  time.  They  ignore  Reality 
for  a  variety  of  reasons.  As  a  rule,  they  are 
too  poor  to  have  seen  more  than  a  few  minor 
aspects  of  great  life ;  still  worse,  they  spend 
their  receptive  years,  up  to  thirty-five,  exclu- 
sively in  libraries,  so  that  subsequent  acquaint- 


104   The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

ance  with  Reality  finds  them  quite  impermea- 
ble to  new  impressions.  Like  the  Doctores,  al- 
though unfitted  to  grapple  with  any  concern  of 
life,  they  yet  constantly  deal  with  problems  of 
life,  past  or  present,  with  History  or  Theology. 
The  same  class-ambition  that  prompted  the 
"learned"  judges  of  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries;  the  same  overbearing  self-as- 
sertiveness  of  the  bureaucrat  that  filled  the 
hearts  of  those  judges,  now  fills  the  hearts  of 
the  arm-chair  historian  or  theologian  in  Ger- 
many, and  largely  also  in  France.  Their  ambi- 
tion is  indeed  boundless.  Although  nobody 
brings  any  pressure  upon  them  to  this  purpose, 
yet  they  slave  away  year  after  year  at  the  elab- 
oration of  some  stupendously  erudite  work  on 
History,  Philology,  or  Theology.  Naturally,  they 
want  to  be  recognized  as  the  masters  of  the  sub- 
ject. He  who  is  not  of  the  profession  is  either 
silenced  by  neglect,  or  positively  condemned  by 
haughty  vituperation.  Buckle,  in  their  view,  is 
a  dilettante;  so  is  Pater,  Grote,  Froude,  J.  G. 
Frazer,  Joseph  Ferrari,  Motley,  Duruy,  Riehl. 
For  what  they  are  really  after  is  to  wield  the 
same  absolutism  in  History  and  Theology  that 
their  forerunners  in  the  law-courts  of  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  centuries  wielded  in 
point  of  Law.    In  the  interest  of  that  great  aim, 


Argument  from  the  Method.  105 

nothing  is  more  efficient  than  the  inquisitorial 
method;  the  method  of  learned  and  malicious 
insinuation,  that  rapidly  throws  about  one  the 
halo  of  "singular  sagacity,"  and  "penetrating 
insight ;"  the  method  of  proof  by  mere  indicia, 
which  at  once  clothes  you  in  the  wide  gown  of  a 
Doctor  subtilissimus;  the  method  of  torturing 
single  words  and  phrases  until  all  their  natural 
meaning  has  been  racked  out  of  them.  To  em- 
ploy this  method,  both  a  peculiar  etat  d'dme, 
and  a  peculiar  erudition  a  la  Archbishop  Ussher 
or  Pfeffinger  are  required.  This  is  unobtain- 
able for  the  normal  man  outside  the  professorial 
career ;  and  accordingly,  History,  Theology,  and 
Philology  are  at  present  almost  exclusively  un- 
der the  weight  of  an  Absolutism  which  the  na- 
tions of  Europe  have  long  shaken  off  in  spheres 
political  and  social. 

To  come  now  to  our  immediate  point.  It  is 
here  maintained  that  the  "Higher  Critics"  of 
the  Bible  are  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the 
"learned  judges"  of  former  ages;  that,  for  the 
same  psychological  motives  that  actuated  those 
judges  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies to  employ,  in  ever  more  "refined"  ways, 
the  inquisitorial  method,  the  "Higher  Critics" 
of  the  Bible  are  employing  the  same  pernicious 
and    sterile    method;    and,    finally,    that    the 


106    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

"Higher  Critics"  of  the  Bible,  far  from  applying 
mental  processes  and  methods  of  research  ap- 
proved by  the  true  spirit  of  scientific  thought, 
are,  on  the  contrary,  the  victims,  or  worse,  of 
the  same  thoroughly  unscientific  and  inhuman 
delusion  that  was,  in  ultima  analysis,  the  real 
cause  of  the  horrors  of  witch-trials  and  religious 
persecution. 

To  illustrate  and  fully  prove  the  preceding 
statement,  we  need  only  relate  the  story  of  the 
"Higher  Criticism"  of  Genesis  xiv.  For  clear- 
ness' sake  we  first  subjoin  the  text : 

And  it  came  to  pass  in  the  days  of  Amraphel 
king  of  Shinar,  Arioch  king  of  Ellasar,  Chedor- 
laomer  king  of  Elam,  and  Tidal  king  of  nations ; 

2  That  these  made  war  with  Bera  king  of 
Sodom,  and  with  Birsha  king  of  Gomorrah, 
Shinab  king  of  Admah,  and  Shemeber  king  of 
Zeboiim,  and  the  king  of  Bela,  which  is  Zoar. 

3  All  these  were  joined  together  in  the  vale 
of  Siddim,  which  is  the  salt  sea. 

4  Twelve  years  they  served  Chedorlaomer, 
and  in  the  thirteenth  year  they  rebelled. 

5  And  in  the  fourteenth  year  came  Chedor- 
laomer, and  the  kings  that  were  with  him,  and 
smote  the  Rephaims  in  Ashtei'oth  Karnaim,  and 
the  Zuzims  in  Ham,  and  the  Emims  in  Shaveh 
Kiriathaim, 

6  And  the  Horites  in  their  mount  Seir,  unto 
El-paran,  which  is  by  the  wilderness. 

7  And  they  returned,  and  came  to  En-mish- 
pat,  which  is  Kadesh,  and  smote  all  the  country 


Argument  from  the  Method.  107 

of  the  Amalekites,  and  also  the  Amorites,  that 
dwelt  in  Hazezon-tamar. 

8  And  there  went  out  the  king  of  Sodom, 
and  the  king  of  Gomorrah,  and  the  king  of  Ad- 
mah,  and  the  king  of  Zeboiim,  and  the  king  of 
Bela  (the  same  is  Zoar;)  and  they  joined  battle 
with  them  in  the  vale  of  Siddim  ; 

9  With  Chedorlaomer  the  king  of  Elam,  and 
with  Tidal  king  of  nations,  and  Amraphel  king 
of  Shinar,  and  Arioch  king  of  Ellasar ;  four  kings 
with  five. 

10  And  the  vale  of  Siddim  was  full  of  slime- 
pits  ;  and  the  kings  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  fled, 
and  fell  there ;  and  they  that  remained  fled  to 
the  mountain. 

11  And  they  took  all  the  goods  of  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah,  and  all  their  victuals,  and  went  their 
way. 

12  And  they  took  Lot,  Ab ram's  brother's  son, 
who  dwelt  in  Sodom,  and  his  goods,  and  de- 
parted. 

13  And  there  came  one  that  had  escaped,  and 
told  Abram  the  Hebrew;  for  he  dwelt  in  the 
plain  of  Mamre  the  Amorite,  brother  of  Eshcol, 
and  brother  of  Aner :  and  these  were  confederate 
with  Abram. 

14  And  when  Abram  heard  that  his  brother 
was  taken  captive,  he  armed  his  trained  servants, 
born  in  his  own  house,  three  hundred  and  eight- 
een, and  pursued  them  unto  Dan. 

15  And  he  divided  himself  against  them,  he 
and  his  servants,  by  night,  and  smote  them, 
and  pursued  them  unto  Hobah,  which  is  on  the 
left  hand  of  Damascus. 

16  And  he  brought  back  all  the  goods,  and 
also  brought  again  his  brother  Lot,  and  his 
goods,  and  the  women  also,  and  the  people. 


108    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

17  And  the  king  of  Sodom  went  out  to  meet 
him  after  his  return  from  the  slaughter  of  Che- 
dorlaomer,  and  of  the  kings  that  were  with  him, 
at  the  valley  of  Shaveh,  which  is  the  king's 
dale. 

18  And  Melchizedek  king  of  Salem  brought 
forth  bread  and  wine :  and  he  was  the  priest  of 
the  most  high  God . 

19  And  he  blessed  him,  and  said.  Blessed  be 
Abram  of  the  most  high  God,  possessor  of 
heaven  and  earth : 

20  And  blessed  be  the  most  high  God,  which 
hath  delivered  thine  enemies  into  thy  hand. 
And  he  gave  him  tithes  of  all. 

21  And  the  king  of  Sodom  said  unto  Abram, 
Give  me  the  persons,  and  take  the  goods  to 
thyself. 

22  And  Abram  said  to  the  king  of  Sodom,  I 
have  lift  up  mine  hand  unto  the  Lord,  the  most 
high  God,  the  possessor  of  heaven  and  earth, 

23  That  I  will  not  take  from  a  thread  even  to 
a  shoelatchet,  and  that  I  will  not  take  any  thing 
that  is  thine,  lest  thou  shouldest  say,  I  have 
made  Abram  rich  : 

24  Save  only  that  which  the  young  men  have 
eaten,  and  the  portion  of  the  men  which  went 
with  me,  Aner,  Eshcol,  and  Mamre ;  let  them 
take  their  portion. 

This  whole  chapter,  Noldeke,  Wellhausen, 
and  so  many  other  "Higher  Critics"  say,  is 
simply  a  very  late  interpolation,  i.  e.,  a  forgery. 
Says  Wellhausen :  "That  'at  the  time  of  Abra- 
ham' four  kings  from  the  Persian  Gulf  made  a 
razzia   (or  raid)    as  far  as  the  peninsula  of 


Argument  from  the  Method.  109 

Sinai ;  that  they,  on  that  occasion,  surprised  and 
captured  five  city  princes  who  reigned  in  the 
Dead  Sea ;  that  finally  Abraham,  at  the  head  of 
three  hundred  and  eighteen  servants,  fell  upon 
the  departing  victors,  and  recaptured  what  they 
had  robbed, — these  are  simply  impossibilities."^ 

No  unprejudiced  reader  can  for  a  moment 
fail  to  see  that  the  mental  process  here  used  by 
Wellhausen  is  painfully  identical  with  the  men- 
tal process  used  by  the  '^learned  judges"  of  the 
times  of  the  inquisitorial  principle  in  criminal 
law.  Wellhausen,  after  relating  the  common- 
est occurrences  of  all  history;  that  is,  raids 
made  by  some  kings  into  the  territory  of  other 
princes ;  captures  of  men  and  goods ;  a  military 
surprise  of  the  departing  victors  at  the  hands  of 
a  clever  leader,  who  attacks  their  rear  guard ; 
Wellhausen,  we  say,  after  relating  these  most 
commonplace  and  but  too  likely  events  of  ordi- 
nary warfare,  suddenly  delivers  himself  of  the 
statement,  or  rather  judgment,  that  "all  this  is 
simply  impossible." 

Wliy  is  it  impossible,  Doctor  subtilissimef 
Why  ?  Are  not  raids  as  common  in  all  history  as 
are  sharks  in  the  sea  ?  Do  we  not  know  of 
hundreds  of  raids  and  campaigns  of  Assyrian, 

*  Wellhausen,  J.  Die  Composition  des  Hexateuch 
(third  edition),  Berlin,  1899,  p.  312. 


110    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

Babylonian,  Elamite,  Hittite,  Egyptian,  and 
other  rulers,  very  many  of  which  were  directed 
against  the  country  they  called  Martu,  or  the 
West ;  i.  e.,  Syria  and  Palestine  ?  Do  we  not 
pertinently  know  that  Hammurabi,  King  of 
Babylon  in  the  twenty-second  or  twenty-third 
century  B.  C,  extended  his  rule  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean ?•*  Do  we  not  positively  know  that  Baby- 
lonian influence  was,  in  some  respects,  para- 
mount in  Western  Asia  for  over  a  thousand 
years,  and  that  such  influence  can  not  have  been 
acquired  without  a  certain  military  superiority 
of  the  Babylonians  ?  Have  we  not  inscriptions 
on  the  so-called  Omina  slab  relating  of  such 
raids  into  Western  countries  under  Sargon  of 
Agade,  a  Babylonian  sovereign,  who  ruled  long 
before  Abraham  and  Hammurabi  V  On  the 
strength  of  what  reasonable  argiuncnt  are  we 
entitled  to  deny  prima  facie  credibility  to  the 
statement  of  Genesis  xiv  ? 

There  is  no  such  reasonable  argument.     In 


^See  an  inscription  in  the  British  Museum,  referred 
to  by  'SVmckl^v ,  Altorientalische  Forschungen  I,  pp.  145- 
146.  See  also  on  Babylonian  invasions  of  the  West, 
after  Hammurabi,  Pinches,  in  Records  of  the  Past,  2d 
series,  vol.  v,  pp.  102-105. 

^See  Schrader's  KeilinschriftUche  Bibliothek,  III,  1, 
p.  103;  and  Thureau-Dangin,  in  Compics  Rendus  de 
VAcademie  des  Inscriptions  (Paris  1896,  month  of 
August.) 


Argument  from,  the  Method.  Ill 

reading  chapter  xiv  of  Genesis,  no  fair-minded 
historian  can  say  that  the  facts  related  therein 
are  ''simply  impossibilities."  To  say  so,  is  to 
be  unwarrantably  arbitrary.  To  say  so,  is  to 
act  precisely  as  acted  the  "learned"  judges  of 
the  age  of  the  inquisitorial  principle.  They, 
too,  laid  down  the  condemnation  of  the  accused 
long  before  the  latter  had  been  convicted  by  any 
semblance  of  real  evidence.  They  laid  it  down, 
simply  because  they  wanted  to  do  so;  because 
they  were  anxious  to  assert  their  power,  to 
"make  a  case,"  or  to  win  the  applause  of  their 
absolutist  prince.  There  is  not  a  shadow  of  real 
evidence  discrediting  the  story  of  Genesis  xiv. 
About  the  names  of  the  kings  therein  men- 
tioned we  shall  see  presently.  About  the  facts 
themselves  there  can  be  no  initial  or  logical 
doubt  whatever.  One  may  subsequently  prove 
that  these  facts,  likely  and  natural  in  them- 
selves, have  yet  never  taken  place.  ISTot  every- 
thing that  is  likely  is  for  this  reason  alone  also 
real.  We  are,  however,  speaking  here  of  the 
initial  attitude  of  the  historian  to  Genesis  xiv. 
Wellhausen,  a  limme,  or  from  the  very  outset, 
condemns  the  chapter,  because  it  contains  things 
"simply  impossible."  This  he  has  no  right 
whatever  to  do  ;  not  the  palest  shadow  of  a  right. 
That  chapter  contains  no  impossibilities  what- 


112  The  Failure  of  the  Highei"  Criticism. 

ever.  But  Wellhausen,  like  all  the  rest  of  the 
Higher  Critics,  is  in  reality  not  a  critic,  but  a 
sixteenth  or  seventeenth  century  criminal  judge. 
He  treats  the  crime  of  forgery  imputed  to  the 
' 'interpolator"  of  Genesis  xiv,  in  the  manner 
and  after  the  methods  of  Carpzov  or  Dam- 
houder,  or  any  other  criminal  judge  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century.  He  lays  it  down  from  the 
outset,  "ea;  plenitudine  juris  mei/'  that  this  "in- 
terpolator" has  indeed  forged  the  chapter.  Then 
he  proceeds  to  prove  the  forgery.  In  vain  the 
"interpolator"  exclaims:  "Consider,  O  Judge, 
the  names  of  the  kings !  It  was  said  formerly 
that  all  these  names  were  'free  inventions'  of 
mine.  Have  these  names  not  been  borne  out  in 
the  last  thirty  years  by  authentic  inscriptions 
from  the  second  millennium  B.  C.  ?  Is  not 
every  one  name  a  real  name  'i  Has  not  the  As- 
syriologist  George  Smith,  in  1871,  shown  that 
Arioch,  king  of  Ellasar,  in  verse  1  of  Genesis 
xiv,  was,  according  to  authentic  inscriptions,  a 
real  king  whom  Hammurabi  once  defeated  ? 
Did  not  the  same  George  Smith  show,  in  the 
same  unimpeachable  manner,  that  the  name  of 
King  Chedorlaomer  of  Elam,  mentioned  in 
verse  1  of  Genesis  xiv,  is  indeed  a  true  Elamite 
name,  Lagamar  being  the  name  of  an  Elamite 
goddess,  and  Kudur  having  been  found  in  the 


Argument  from  the  Method.  113 

authentic  names  of  Elamite  Kings,  such  as 
Kudur-Mabuk,  and  Kudur-Nanchundi  ?  And 
has  not  Mr.  Pinches  found  the  full  name  of 
Kuturlagamar  (Chedorlaomer)  in  a  Chaldsean 
document  ?"* 

There  is  no  modern  court  of  law  where  the 
preceding  arguments  of  the  'interpolator" 
would  not  be  accepted  as  complete  and  irrefuta- 
ble evidence  for  the  above  statement,  that  Gene- 
sis xiv  does  not  contain  anything  that  can  in 
common  fairness  be  called  "simply  impossible" 
from  the  very  outset.  There  is  no  modem  judge 
but  would  recognize  that  Wellhausen's  initial 
dictum  of  "simply  impossible"  is  hopelessly  ab- 
surd and  arbitrary.  Historic  impossibilities 
are  either  chronological,  topical,  logical,  psy- 
chological, or  technical.  There  are  no  other  im- 
possibilities wdth  regard  to  historic  facts.  We 
have  condemned  certain  records  as  relating  im- 
possibilities, because  they  contained  a  flagrant 
incongruence  in  point  of  time,  or  in  point  of 

'See  The  Academy  for  September  7,  1895,  p.  189. 
G.  Smith  and  most  Assyriologists  (Oppert,  Delitzsch- 
MUrdter,  Hommel,  etc.)  have  always  accepted  Genesis 
xiv  as  a  record  of  historic  facts ;  while  the  majority 
of  "  Higher  Critics"  (Reuss,  Noldeke,  in  1869,  Well- 
hausen,  etc.)  have  refused  to  accept  that  chapter  as  an 
authentic  statement  of  events  of  the  times  of  Ham- 
murabi. See  the  elaborate  notes  in  Maspero's  Histoire 
Ancienne,  vol.  ii  (1897),  pp.  48,  49,  50. 
8 


114  TJie  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

space ;  likewise,  because  tbey  contained  what  is 
illogical,  or  psychologically  impossible ;  and, 
finally,  because  they  contain  a  technical,  or  what 
the  Germans  call  sachliche,  impossibility.  Does 
Genesis  xiv  contain  any  such  ground  for  the 
initial  assumption  of  "impossibilities  ?"  ISTone 
whatever. 

However,  as  said  above,  the  Higher  Critic 
is  not  a  modern  judge.  He  is  a  judge  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  He  deals  not  with  facts, 
and  such  conclusions  from  facts,  as  are  psycho- 
logically justifiable.  He  deals  with  the  inquis- 
itorial method  of  browbeating  facts  and  wit- 
nesses, of  poisoning  statements  by  diabolical  in- 
sinuations, and  of  bullying  everybody  by  declar- 
ing the  most  likely  things  "absolute  impossibil- 
ities." For,  what  indeed  has  been  the  answer 
of  the  Higher  Critics  to  the  arguments  of  the 
"interpolator"  above  stated  ?  Here  is  their 
answer : 

"The  accused  (interpolator)  refers  to  the 
slight  error  committed  by  the  previous  judges 
(Higher  Critics)  in  declaring,  as  they  did,  that 
all  the  names  of  kings  in  Genesis  xiv  were  free 
inventions  of  his.  We  do  not  say  at  present, 
that  they  were.  Those  names  are  really  names 
of  Oriental  kings  of  Elam,  Ellasar,  and  Shinar. 
The  previous  judges,  for  reasons  that  the  ac- 


A  rgument  from  the  Method.  115 

cused  would  not  be  able  to  follow,  and  which 
therefore  it  behooves  us  at  present  to  conceal, 
did  not  choose  to  admit  their  knowledge  of  the 
authenticity  of  those  names.  But  even  admit- 
ting, as  we  now  do,  that  these  kings  of  Shinar, 
Ellasar,  and  Elam,  as  named  in  Genesis  xiv, 
were  indeed  authentic  kings  of  those  countries, 
we  can  not  at  all  admit  that  this  merely  ex- 
ternal circumstance  can  in  any  way  exonerate 
the  accused  of  his  heinous  crime.  The  names 
are  true.  But  will  any  one  undertake  to  prove 
that  those  names  could  not  have  been  copied  out 
by  the  accused  from  some  old  records  in  Baby- 
lon ?  Could  he,  a  child  of  the  fifth  century 
B.  C,  not  have  repaired  to  Babylon,  and  get- 
ting information  from  Babylonian  priests  and 
historians,  'write  up'  Genesis  xiv,  as  if  this 
chapter  were  a  document  from  the  beginning  of 
the  second  millennium,  or  relating  authentic 
facts  of  that  time  ?  Note  our  sagacity.  Is  it  not 
superbly  subtle  to  have  pointed  out  this  most 
unlikely  act  of  literary  forgery  ?  Is  such  sa- 
gacity, such  lightning  flashes  of  'presumptional' 
thinking,  such  sorites  of  hypothetical  concatena- 
tions ivOvfJiT^fULTa  and  dTTLXf^iprjfxaTa  not 
in  itself  a  full  proof  of  the  most  reprehensible 
act  of  the  accused  ?  Here  is,  apparently,  an 
authentic    record   in  Genesis  xiv.       With  the 


116  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

usual  wiliness  of  hardened  criminals,  the  ac- 
cused repairs  stealthily  to  Babel,  bribes  priests, 
filches  Babylonian  documents,  copies  old 
records,  and  imbuing  himself  with  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  second  millennium  B.  C,  'writes 
up'  a  chapter  of  history  that  is,  in  all  its  out- 
ward appearance  and  inward  probability,  a  most 
plausible  piece  of  literary  forgery.  Mark  the 
coincidence  of  outward  appearance  with  inward 
probability.  In  authentic  things  there  is,  as  a 
rule,  a  certain  slight  but  natural  discrepancy 
between  what  we  call  outer  and  inner  proba- 
bility. External  reality  is  always  somewhat  of 
a  blurred  mirror  of  existence  internal.  The  sub- 
jective does  not  correspond  fully  to  the  ob- 
jective, nor  the  spiritual  to  the  material.  But 
in  inauthentic  and  illegal  acts  there  is  just  that 
complete  correspondence  between  inside  and  out- 
side, between  soul  and  body,  heart  and  act,  that 
to  the  experienced  and  truly  learned  judge  re- 
veals the  crime.  The  criminal,  by  his  very  at- 
tempt to  create  a  pleasing  harmony  between 
names,  dates,  places,  and  inner  probability  of 
events,  reveals  the  criminal  nature  of  his  action. 
True,  none  but  a  trained  intellect  will  discover 
such  subtle  traces  of  misdeeds.  But  it  is  equally 
true  that  such  an  intellect  will  discover  it.  Or, 
is  it  not  luce  meridiana  clarius  that  this  verv 


Argument  f  pom  the  Method.  117 

coincidence  of  correct  names  with  probable 
events  in  Genesis  xiv  calls  for  the  application 
of  that  powerful,  nay,  irresistible  and  acknowl- 
edged principle,  that  'too  plausible  a  probability 
is  rightly  considered  to  be  suspect,'  or,  as  Dam- 
houder  has  it,  verisimilitudo  ultra  quam  necesse 
est  magna  suspicionem  in  se  trahit.  The  ac- 
cused, in  order  to  prove  his  officially  impossible 
innocence,  has  indeed  advanced  the  ludicrous  ar- 
gument that  had  he  copied  his  tale  from  Baby- 
lonian records  as  they  existed  in  his  time — i.  e., 
in  the  fifth  centuiy  B.  C. — ^he  could  not  have 
written  in  Genesis  xiv,  Chedorlaomer,  which  in 
that  century  was  unknown  at  Babel,  but  should 
have  written  Kudurlagamar,  which  spelling 
alone  was  current  in  his  time.^  This,  far  from 
proving  his  case,  is  one  more  argument  against 
him,  in  that  it  only  proves  his  natural  attempt 
to  cover  up  the  traces  of  his  forgery,  and  to 
choose  from  among  the  various  forms  of  Kudur- 
laomer  the  one  which  had  the  most  archaic  ap- 
pearance in  sound.  It  is  evident  that  the  most 
elementary  cunning  of  forgers  of  allegedly  an- 
cient documents  will  suffice  to  suggest  to  them 
the  choice  of  the  most  likely  verbiage  and  style. 
Is  it,  for  instance,  possible  to  assume  that  a 
modern  forger  who  wants  to  foist  a  false  manu- 


^Plommel,  The  Ancient  Hebrew  Tradition  (1897),  p. 
165. 


118  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

script  of  Chaucer  on  some  silly  amateur,  will 
write  it  in  the  prose  of  the  eighteenth  century  ? 
An  obscure  Frenchman,  by  the  name,  if  we  mis- 
take not,  of  Alphonse  Daudet,  has  indeed  done 
such  an  incredibly  perverse  thing  in  his  novel 
'Ulmmortel'  in  which  a  member  of  the  French 
Academy,  and  thus  one  of  our  respected  col- 
leagues, is  said  to  have  been  taken  in  by  forged 
manuscripts  dating,  apparently,  from  the  four- 
teenth century,  although  manifestly  written  in 
the  prose  of  nineteenth-century  France.  But 
Daudet  was  one  of  those  unspeakable  free 
lances,  who  will  say  anything,  as  long  as  they 
can  make  money  by  so  doing.  Our  trained  in- 
tellect can  not  be  duped.  We  do  know  that 
criminals  will  use  contemporary  prose  or  names, 
lest  we,  conversant  as  we  are  with  the  prose  of 
all  ages,  be  put  on  our  guard  from  the  very  be- 
ginning. Their  doing  so  is  therefore  proof  con- 
clusive of  forgery.  To  sum  up,  it  is  absolutely 
clear  that  all  the  arguments  of  the  accused  as 
to  the  authenticity  of  Genesis  xiv  are  beyond 
the  point,  illogical,  against  all  psychology,  and 
therefore  absolutely  inacceptable." 

The  gentle  reader  who  has  been  able  to  with- 
hold his  indignation  and  to  read  the  judge's 
(or  Higher  Critic's)  absurd  discourse  to  the 
end,  must  kindly  pardon  us  for  inviting  him  to 


Argument  from  the  Method.  119 

stand  the  ordeal  for  a  little  longer.  He  has  not 
yet  learned  the  whole  of  the  Higher  Critic's 
ars  magna  probandi.  Before  proceeding  we 
must  again  call  the  reader's  attention  to  the  fact 
that  the  preceding  argumentation  of  the  Higher 
Critic  is,  in  tone,  method,  and  drift,  identical 
with  the  discourses  of  seventeenth-century 
judges  in  witchcraft  trials.  Read  one  or  two 
such  trials  in  the  original  acts.  You  will  find  the 
same  fitiasserie,  the  same  perverse  application 
of  moral  truths,  the  same  method  of  revolting 
insinuation.  Or,  if  you  can  not  easily  obtain 
access  to  the  musty  bundles  of  rotuli  of  old 
witch-trials,  read  the  speeches  of  Robespierre 
and  other  masters  of  diabolical  invective.  Pur- 
blind prejudice  alone  can  prevent  one  from 
noticing  the  absolute  identity  of  the  method  in 
both  cases.  Or,  what  else  shall  we  say  of  Well- 
hausen,  whose  absurd  works  are  still  enjoying 
such  reputation  in  Europe  and  America  ?  After 
having  delivered  himself,  as  we  have  seen,  of 
his  pompous  and  inane  "these  are  simply  im- 
possibilities" with  regard  to  Genesis  xiv,  he 
feels  that  some  people  might  timidly  ask  them- 
selves: "Is  the  mere  dictum  of  a  German  Pon- 
derosity quite  sufficient  to  discredit  an  entire 
chapter  of  Genesis  f  x\nd,  accordingly,  Well- 
hausen,  in  order  to  poison  the  minds  of  these 


120  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

timid  believers — that  is,  of  an,  alas !  but  too 
numerous  section  of  students  and  non-students 
— goes  on  saying:  "Tliey  [the  impossibilities 
implied  in  Genesis  xiv]  do  not  become  more 
worthy  of  credence  by  their  being  placed,  with 
great  and  deliberate  care,  in  a  locality  that  has 
since  disappeared."^" 

Wellhausen  hints  at  the  fact  that  the  king's 
near  (he  says  "in")  the  Dead  Sea,  of  whom  men- 
tion is  made  in  Genesis  xiv,  ruled  over  a  terri- 
tory which  subsequently  disappeared,  as  related 
later  on  in  Genesis.  Being  unable,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  make  even  the  semblance  of  a  fair  case 
of  his  contention,  Wellhausen  now,  exactly  after 
the  manner  of  the  old  judges  of  witch-trials, 
uses  the  poison  of  vile  insinuation.  The  crim- 
inal jurist  of  the  seventeenth  century  used  to 
say,  "/s  fecit  cut  prodestf — "The  crime  was 
probably  made  by  him  who  profited  by  it."  The* 
interpolator  thus  invented  the  destruction  of 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah  in  order  to  tell  with  im- 
punity a  story  of  some  kings  who  held  territory 
round  the  two  doomed  tou-ns.  Can  learned  per- 
versity go  any  further  ? 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  absurdity  of  Well- 

^"AVellhausen,  Die  Composition  dcs  Hexateuchs,  etc. 
(3d  ed,  1899,  p.  312.)  *'  Sie  werden  dadurch  nicht 
zutrauenswurdiger ,  dass  sie  mil  grosser  Gejtissentlichkeit 
in  eine  untergegangene  Welt  placiert  werden." 


Ai'guraent  from  the  Method.  121 

hausen's  elaborate  system  of  arraignment  comes 
back,  root  and  branch,  to  his  initial  and  purely 
arbitrary  assumption,  that  Genesis  xiv  is  a  for- 
gery,— just  as  all  the  revolting  proceedings  of 
the  old  inquisitorial  judges  in  witch-trials  come 
back  to  their  initial  assumption  that  the  ac- 
cused woman  was  a  witch.  However,  there  is 
another  and  equally  important  point,  that  must 
be  steadily  kept  in  mind.  The  Higher  Critics, 
like  their  forbears  on  the  judicial  benches  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  have  practically  only 
one  category  of  argument,  that  of  the  Possible 
and  its  converse,  the  Impossible.  He  who  will 
carefully  peruse  the  works  of  the  Higher  Critics 
will  soon  convince  himself  that  the  principal  en- 
gine they  work  with  is  the  bald  category  of  the 
Possible  and  the  Impossible.  Whatever  hap- 
pens to  agree  with  what  their  little  experience 
of  life  or  thought  may  accept  as  ''possible,"  that 
they  will  admit.  Whatever  event,  institution, 
idea,  or  personality  does  not  commend  itself  as 
"possible"  to  their  minds,  that  they  will  forth- 
with dismiss  with  the  cold  sneer  of  the  pedant. 
The  true  student  of  history  does  but  rarely  use 
the  formal  and  practically  void  category  of  the 
Possible  and  the  Impossible.  He  is  too  busy  dis- 
covering the  relations  and  correlations  of  the 
psychological  forces  of  Keality.     He  has  long 


\y 


122  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

learned  to  disparage  the  endless  discussions  of 
the  mediaeval  or  scholastic  doctors  about  the 
possibilitas  dbsoluta,  possibiUtas  ex  supposi- 
iione,  possibile  logicum,  posslhile  reale,  etc., 
which,  together  with  the  scholastic  subtleties 
about  potentia,  occupied  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  scholars  in  the  monastic  schools  of  the 
twelfth,  thirteenth,  and  fourteenth  centuries 
with  interminable  disputations  ending  in  no  ap- 
preciable result.  A  few  examples  will  put  the 
whole  matter  in  a  clear  light. 

One  of  the  most  moderate  yet  resolute  Higher 
Critics  of  our  time  is  Professor  Edward  Ivonig. 
In  his  "Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament" 
("Eiiileitung  in  das  Alte  Testament"  Bonn, 
1893),  he  sincerely  tries  to  be  as  just  and  fair 
as  he  is  learned.  Not  the  vaguest  imputation 
of  deliberate  unfairness  to  the  Pentateuch  can 
be  laid  at  his  door.  His  is  a  painstaking,  labor- 
ious, and  erudite  work.  It  is,  nevertheless,  a 
book  thoroughly  vitiated  by  that  false  and  un- 
scientific view  of  the  questions  raised  which  we 
here  ascribe  to  all  Higher  Critics.  iSTeither 
Konig  nor  Wellhausen  can  move  outside  the 
sphere  of  methods  tainted  with  all  the  poison  of 
the  inquisitorial  principle.  A  mere  formal 
"j)ossibility"  is  sufficient  for  Konig  to  cast  the 
gravest  doubt  upon  entire  chapters  and  sections 


Argument  from  the  Method.  123 

of  Genesis  and  Exodus.  When  it  is  urged  that 
the  expressions  "without  the  camp,"  "out  of 
the  camp,"  in,  e.  g.,  Leviticus  iv,  12 ;  xiii,  46 ; 
xiv,  3,  8 ;  etc.,  clearly  indicate  a  time  when  the 
Israelites  were  still  in  the  desert  during  their 
exodus;  then  Konig  literally  retorts:  "It  is 
'possible  to  conceive  that  these  portions  of  the 
text  referring  to  incidents  of  the  wanderings  of 
the  Israelites  through  the  desert  arose  in  the 
following  manner.  Some  of  the  laws  and 
stories  that  originated  in  the  period  of  Israel's 
divinely  willed  salvation  may  very  well  have  re- 
tained their  original  traits,  which  were  subse- 
quently, when  the  text  of  Leviticus  was  com- 
piled, used  as  parts  of  the  narrative."^^  In  the 
same  way,  Konig  discredits  the  value  of  the 
numerous  details  of  customs  and  laws  Egyptian 
to  be  found  in  Genesis  and  Exodus.  Could  not 
these  details,  Konig  asks,  "possibly"  have  been 
inserted  by  a  late  compiler  V' 

Mark  the  enormity  of  the  argument :  Should 
we  find  no  trace  of  Egyptian  habits  and  customs 
in  the  portions  of  Genesis  and  Exodus  relating 
to  that  country,  then  the  Higher  Critic  would 

"Konig,  E.,  Einleitung  in  das  Alte  Testament,  1893, 
p.  157.  The  original  German  is  uncommonly  involved, 
but  the  above  abridged  translation  does  not  leave  out 
a  single  essential  part. 

12 Konig,  I.  c.  p.  159. 


124  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

triumpliantlj  exclaim:  ''Does  not  this  total  ab- 
sence of  local  color  of  /Egyptiaca  at  once  con- 
demn the  Bible  stories  located  in  Egypt  ?  Is  it 
conceivable  that  these  stories,  if  authentic, 
should  not  have  contained  some  traits  about  the 
country  which,  more  than  any  other  country, 
abounded  in  traits  singular  and  strange  ?"  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  Higher  Critic  is  com- 
pelled to  admit  that  there  is  plenty  of  local  color 
(thus,  the  carrying  of  baskets  on  the  head,  the 
shaving  of  the  beard  before  appearing  before 
Pharaoh,  etc.)  in  Genesis  and  Exodus  with  re- 
gard to  matters  Egyptian,  then  he  exclaims  with 
equal  triumph :  "Could  not  this  local  color  have 
been  'procured'  by  a  late  interpolator  ?  Was  it 
impossible  to  secure  such  details  in  the  sixth  or 
fifth  century  B.  C.  ?  Evidently  not.  What  guar- 
antee have  we,  then,  of  the  authenticity  of  the 
Egyptian  narratives  of  the  Bible  V 

This  was  precisely  the  method  of  the  judges 
in  witch-trials.  When  the  accused  proved  an. 
alibi,  then  the  judge  triumphantly  retorted: 
"An  alibi?  Can  not  a  witch  be  in  two  places  at 
a  time  ?  Have  not  Bodinus,  Delrio,  Clarus, 
Zanger,  etc.,  etc.,  conclusively  shown  that  as 
witches  can  fly  in  space,  so  they  can  also  be  at 
several  spots  at  the  same  time  ?"  It  can  indeed 
not  be  denied  that  if  witches  are  possible,  they 


Argument  from  the  MetJiod.  125 

may  bewitch  space  as  much  as  men.  If  it  be 
allowed  to  use  mere  formal  possibilities  as  ar- 
guments, then  indeed  it  may  legitimately  be 
doubted  whether  Konig  and  Wellhausen  are  not, 
after  all,  the  greatest  enemies  of  Higher  Crit- 
icism. For  is  it  not  just  possible  that  they  wrote 
their  works  in  order  to  show  up  the  hopeless 
absurdity  of  Higher  Criticism?  Much  might 
be  advanced  to  that  effect.  At  any  rate,  it  is 
"possible.'^  Such  things  have  been  known  to 
happen ;  there  are  several  masterpieces  of  Swift, 
and  even  of  scholars  proper,  that  may  very  well 
serve  as  precedents.  Once  we  admit  mere  "pos- 
sibilities," we  can  prove  anything  we  like.  The 
old  Italian  criminalists  rightly  said,  on  the 
basis  of  the  inquisitorial  principle  rife  in  their 
time,  "Give  me  two  lines,  two  ever  so  trivial 
and  commonplace  lines  written  by  any  one,  and 
I  undertake  to  bring  the  writer  to  the  gallows." 
Undoubtedly  this  is  possible  and  feasible,  but 
only  as  long  as  the  method  of  inquisitorial  prin- 
ciple is  recognized.  In  modem  criminal  law  it 
is  absolutely  impossible.  Mere  possibilities  are 
rejected  as  evidence  or  proof.  ^Nowadays  we 
insist  on  psychological,  and  not  on  formal  proof 
in  criminal  matters.  Except,  when  people  criti- 
cise the  Bible.  With  regard  to  this  most  im- 
portant of  all  books,  we  still  suffer  the  applica- 


126  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

tion  of  a  method  of  crimiual  procedure  which 
we  have  long  thrown  overboard  when  dealing 
with  the  most  lowly  and'  vulgar  of  criminals. 
The  so-called  crimes  of  the  "interpolators,"  "re- 
dactors," "compilers"  of  the  Pentateuch,  are 
still  proceeded  with  after  the  fashion  of  trials 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  Mere  possibilities 
are  adduced  as  proof  conclusive;  insinuations 
are  leveled  at  the  most  natural  and  simple  pas- 
sages of  the  Bible ;  and  the  guilt  of  the  "forgers" 
is  taken  for  2;r anted  from  the  very  outset. 

It  is  high  time  that  this  scandalous  witch- 
trial  of  the  Bible  be  put  an  end  to.  It  is  im- 
perative, in  the  interest  of  humanity,  knowl- 
edge, and  religion,  that  the  Bible  shall  be  sub- 
jected, if  at  all,  to  a  criminal  examination  ac- 
cording to  the  precepts  of  modern  criminal  law. 
The  honest  student  may  rest  convinced  that  the 
Bible  can  and  will  stand  any  fair  criticism.  He 
need  not  be  afraid.  The  Rock  of  the  Bible  is  as 
impregnable  as  is  the  Power  that  gave  rise  to  it. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


The  Argument  from  the  Theory  of  Names,  of 
THE  Foreigner,  and  of  Myths. 


CHAPTEK  IV. 

The  Argument  from  the  Theory  of  ^^Tames, 
OF  THE  Foreigner^  and  of  Myths. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  we  have  shown  that 
the  method  used  by  the  Higher  Critics  is  as  per- 
nicious as  it  is  unscientific.  It  is  a  method  long 
abandoned,  and,  to  speak  plainly,  despised  by 
all  real  students  of  history,  philology,  and  the- 
ology. It  is  as  antiquated  and  obsolete  as  it  is 
unsound  and  perverse.  It  is  destructive  and 
unfounded.  It  is  the  method  by  means  of  which 
the  most  astounding  and  now  avowed  bank- 
ruptcy of  knowledge  of  all  the  ages  of  study 
and  research  has  been  brought  about.  For  it  is 
well  known  that  the  same  method  that  the 
Higher  Critics  of  the  Bible  have  been  using, 
has  in  the  last  one  hundred  and  thirty  years 
been  applied  to  the  origins  of  our  civilization, 
and  with  the  same  discreditable  result.  The 
inquisitorial  principle,  when  applied  to  phi- 
9  129 


130  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

lology  and  to  the  origins  of  language,  religion, 
"races,"  and  history  generally,  stands  at  pres- 
ent convicted  of  a  hopeless  bankruptcy  of  re- 
sults. By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
indeed,  it  was  held  that  the  great  philologians, 
or  inquisitorial  judges  of  words,  had  firmly  es- 
tablished the  following  interesting  "truths" 
about  our  primeval  history : 

(1)  With  the  exception  of  a  few  nations, 
such  as  the  Finns,  Hungarians,  Turks,  etc.,  all 
the  white  peoples  of  Europe  are  Aryans,  whose 
ancestors  originally  lived  in  Central  Asia,  from 
where  they  spread  southward  and  westward. 

(2)  Their  original  language  was  Aryan,  to 
which  idiom  Sanskrit  stood  nearest,  so  that 
Sanskrit  may  practically  be  taken  as  the  oldest 
of  the  Aryan  langiiages. 

(3)  Their  religion,  too,  was  originally  one, 
the  Aryan  religion,  and  both  Greek  and  Norse 
mythology,  Indian  religion,  etc.,  came  originally 
from  the  old  Aryan  stock,  as  witness  the  famous 
equation  Jupitei-=Diaus-pitar. 

(4)  All  our  plants,  implements — in  short  all 
the  instruments  of  our  civilization — come  from 
the  central  or  western  portion  of  Asia. 

(5)  As  against  the  pure  and  ideal  Aryans, 
there  was  the  other,  inferior  "race"  of  the  Sem- 
ites, who,  in  language,  religion,  laws,  and  cus- 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         131 

toms,  were  quite,  or  "racially,"  different  from 
the  Aryans  and  In  do-Germans. 

He  who,  by  the  middle  of  the  last  century, 
should  have  ventured  to  doubt  the  preceding 
"splendid"  results  of  the  philological  method 
based  on  the  inquisitorial  principle,  would  have 
risked  literary  extermination.  To  doubt  Pott, 
Bopp,  the  Grims,  Max  Miiller,  Benfey,  etc., 
seemed  sacrilegious.  Yet  a  fearful  revulsion  of 
opinion  has  since  taken  place,  and  not  one  of 
the  above  five  statements  is  at  present  accepted 
by  the  majority  of  students.^ 

Whoever  carefully  reads  the  interesting  essay 
by  M.  S.  Reinach,  quoted  in  the  preceding  foot- 
note, will  be  in  a  position  to  gauge  aright  the 
complete  insolvency  of  a  method  that  has  these 
hundred  and  thirty  years  so  signally  misled  us 


^In  1879  M.  de  Saussure  dethroned  Sanskrit  as  the 
"oldest  Aryan  language"  (Reinach,  S.,  Manuel  de 
Philologie,  1884,  II,  p.  173) .  We  now  accept  the  opinion 
of  Bergaigne  (La  religion  vediqne,  1883),  that  the  Vedas 
do  not  go  back  to  a  period  moi*e  ancient  than  Homer. 
Mannhardt,  and  especially  Otto  Gruppe  (Die  griech- 
ischen  Ctdte  und  Mythen  in  ihren  Beziehungen  zu  den 
orientalischen  Religionen,  1887),  have  emancipated 
Greek  mythology  from  "  Aryan  "  suzerainty.  Penka 
has  successfully  traced  the  original  seats  of  the  Indo- 
Germans  to  Europe  (Die  Herkunft  der  Aryer,  1886)  ; 
etc.,  etc.  See  the  excellent  essay  by  S.  Reinach,  Le 
Mirage  Oriental,  in  his  Chroniques  D'Orient,  1896,  vol. 
ii,  pp.  509-565. 


^ 


132    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

about  the  realities  of  the  past.  In  this  state- 
ment there  is,  we  beg  to  repeat  it,  nothing  very 
novel.  \Miat  we  claim  to  have  been  hitherto 
ignored ;  wiiat  we  must  insist  upon  as  a  matter 
of  the  highest,  if  neglected,  importance,  is  this, 
that  that  insolvency  was,  and  is,  due  to  the  ap- 
plication of  the  same  method  that  in  previous 
centuries  was  allowed  to  disgrace  the  tribunals 
of  Europe,  and  to  outrage  the  conscience  of 
humanity".  WHiat  is  here  demanded  as  a  fact  of 
scientific  research  is  this,  that  the  method  of 
the  so-called  Higher  Criticism  of  the  Bible  is 
the  same  method  that  in  law  has  led  to  witch- 
trials;  in  philology,  to  the  Aryan  vagaries;  in 
primeval  history,  to  the  wholesale  dislocation  of 
events;  in  Greek  and  Roman  history,  to  the 
radical  distortion  of  all  the  real  issues  and  per- 
sonalities of  that  memorable  period,  as  the  au- 
thor has  shown  in  detail  in  his  "General  His- 
tory." 

We  may  now  turn  to  the  consideration  of  the 
right  method  of  studying  a  book  like  the  Bible. 
We  may  now  say  a  few  words,  and  give  a  few 
examples,  with  regard  to  the  real  method  to  fol- 
low. And  first  as  to  its  name.  If  the  method 
of  the  Higher  Critics  must  be  called  philological 
and  inquisitorial,  ours  may  in  fairness  be 
termed  psychological.     The  philological  method 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         133 

is  so  unsatisfactory  in  any  serious  study  of  the 
Bible  and  of  the  events  related  therein,  that  we 
do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  even  the  opinions  of 
such  philologians  as  resolutely  oppose  the 
Higher  Critics,  and  whom  we  gladly  welcome 
in  our  circle,  can  yet  not  be  held  to  be  decisive 
opinions.  We  honor  and  love  the  men ;  we  fight 
shy  of  their  methods.  To  these  men  belongs,  in 
the  first  place,  Hommel. 

Professor  Hommel,  of  Mimich  University,  is 
one  of  the  ablest  and,  in  point  of  linguistic  ac- 
complishments, one  of  the  most  erudite  of  Bible 
students.     He  is  quite  opposed  to  the  views  of 
the    Higher    Critics,    and  has,  in  consequence, 
suffered  to  a  certain  extent  in  his  academic  posi- 
tion, as  he  has  declared  to  the  author  of  the 
present  work.    In  Germany  the  authority  of  the 
Wellhausen  school  is  so  great,  it  is  considered  to 
be  so  thoroughly  scientific  (or  rather  "wissen- 
schaftlich"),  that  any  person  that  opposes  it,  at 
once  calls  down  upon  himself  the  ignominy  of 
"retrograde    dilettantism."       Professor    Hom- 
mel has,  in  a  series  of  books,  articles,  and  re- 
views contributed  a  very  considerable  mass  of 
new  facts  and  new  ideas  which,  when  properly 
used,  can  not  but  strengthen  the  view  of  the 
bankruptcy  of  Higher  Criticism.    For  all  this, 
the  serious  student  of  the  Bible  and  of  Biblical 


134    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

history  can  not  but  thank  him  most  sincerely 
and  devoutly. 

It  is,  however,  not  possible  to  approve  of  his 
exclusive  use  of  the  philological  method  in  mat- 
ters of  history.  In  this  respect  Professor  Hom- 
mel  is  still  under  the  spell  of  the  prevalent  men- 
tal turn  of  German  historians.  For  various 
social  and  historical  reasons,  the  German 
scholars  have  at  all  times  attached  an  undue 
value  to  the  efficiency  of  the  philological  elab- 
oration of  problems  of  history.  They  take  up 
words  of  some  ancient  language,  analyze  them, 
group  them,  let  on  them  play  the  waters  of  their 
minds  in  a  variety  of  showers,  and  thus  press  out 
of  them  all  manners  of  statements  of  social  in- 
stitutions, political  facts,  religious  beliefs,  etc. 
This  is  convenient;  it  is  also  very  learned.  It 
lends  itself  to  a  bewildering  array  of  erudite 
footnotes  a  la  Selden  or  Salmasius.  But  it  is 
y  hopelessly  wrong.  Language  can  not  help  us  to 
penetrate  to  the  psychological  forces  producing 
the  events  of  history.  History  is  action,  and 
the  grammar  of  action  is  ioto  ccelo  different  from 
the  grammar  of  language.  Action  is,  to  go  for 
a  moment  to  the  philosophic  root  of  the  matter, 
— action  is  essentially  Heraclitic;  while  lan- 
guage is  fundamentally  Eleatic.  Language 
must  assume  the  substantiality  of  things  in  or- 


Theory  of  Na/mes  and  Myths.         135 

der  to  house  and  fix  them  in  permanent  words. 
Action  comes  from  and  proceeds  to  an  unending 
flux  of  things.  Of  all  modes  and  methods  of 
historical  research,  then,  language  is  the  poor- 
est. He  who  has  a  practical  and  thorough 
knowledge  of  one  or  two  Latin  (Romance) 
idioms,  of  one  or  two  Germanic  languages,  and 
of  one  or  two  Slav  or  "Turanian"  idioms, 
has  long  learned  the  important  truth  that 
there  is,  for  the  purposes  of  the  historian, 
no  more  misguiding  instrument  of  research  than 
language.  In  fact,  it  may  be  said,  that  of  all 
things  illogical  and  absurd,  language  is  the  most 
illogical  and  the  most  absurd.  It  is  a  will-o'- 
the-wisp,  a  demon  giving  the  lie  to  its  own  con- 
fession, holding  out  prospects  it  never  means 
to  keep ;  flirting  and  coquetting  with  six  mean- 
ings at  the  same  time ;  heartless,  selfish,  silly, — 
a  finished  killer  of  minds.  A  thousand  years 
from  now  a  philological  historian  will  easily 
prove,  from  the  English  language,  that  the  Eng- 
lish people  of  1905  A.  D.  had  no  will-power 
whatever.  Eor,  was  there  a  word  in  English 
to  express  fully  the  French  "/e  veux,"  or  the 
phrase  ^^ Quelle  volonte!"  or  the  German  ^^Ich 
will,"  or  "Des  Menschen  Wllle  ist  sein  Himmel- 
reich?"  He  who  really  knows  these  three  lan- 
guages is  fully  aware  of  the  impossibility  of 


136    Tihe  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

rendering  these  German  and  French  words  into 
short  and  adequate  English  words.  Vice  versa, 
although  the  French  undoubtedly  are,  and  have 
long  been,  recognized  to  be  the  wittiest  nation  of 
Europe  and  America,  yet  there  is  no  adequate 
word  in  French  to  render  the  German  word 
Witz,  nor  the  English  jolce,  in  its  conversational 
sense.  The  modern  French,  then,  will,  by  the 
philological  historian  a  thousand  years  hence, 
be  declared  to  have  been  a  nation  singularly  de- 
void of  esprit. 

Under  these  circumstances  one  must  be  care- 
ful not  to  attach  any  extraordinary  power  to  ar- 
guments taken  from  a  consideration  of  names 
only.  When  Victor  Hehn  published  his  '"Kul- 
tvrpflanzen  und  Hausthiere"  (1870),  in  which 
he  traced,  in  pleasing  manner  and  polished  style, 
the  origin  of  our  domestic  plants  and  animals 
from  the  East  by  means  of  philological  argu- 
ments, his  efforts  were  greeted  by  his  colleagues 
and  the  general  public  with  great  applause.  The 
sober  fact  is,  that  most  of  the  results  of  his  re- 
searches have  since  been  questioned,  corrected, 
or  abandoned.  Even  Paul  Kretschmer  has  now 
declared  that  "  a  history  of  civilization  on  a 
linguistic  basis  is  pure  nonsense.""    Keeping  in 

2 Kretschmer,  P.,  Einleitung  in  die  Geschichte  der 
Griechischen  Sprache,  1896,  p.  50:  ^'Eine  KuUurge- 
schichte  auf  sprachwissenschaftlicher  Grundlage  ist  ein 
Unding." 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         137 

mind  all  these  weighty  considerations  of  princi- 
ple and  fact  against  the  usual  abuse  of  philolog- 
ical methods  in  history,  we  may  now  attempt 
to  allot  its  true  value  to  the  arguments  of  Pro- 
fessor Ilommel. 

In  one  of  his  most  interesting  works  on  Old 
Testament  Criticism,  in  his  "The  Ancient  He- 
brew Tradition  as  Illustrated  by  the  Monu- 
ments" (English  edition,  London,  1897),  Pro- 
fessor Hommel  lays  down  the  following  princi- 
ple in  the  Preface,  which  he  illustrates  with  the 
subsequent  remarks  and  conclusions  about  the 
nomenclature  of  the  Arabians : 

"For  years  past  I  have  been  convinced  that 
the  question  of  the  authenticity  of  the  Ancient 
Hebrew  tradition  could  not  be  finally  decided 
until  the  Hebrew  personal  names  found  in  the 
Old  Testament  had  first  been  exhaustively  com- 
pared with  other  contemporary  names  of  similar 
formation,  and  carefully  checked  by  them ;  and 
that  all  that  was  needed  was  the  hand  of  an  ex- 
pert to  disclose  the  treasures  hitherto  concealed 
in  them,  and  to  set  forth  the  evidence  they  con- 
tain in  such  clear  and  convincing  fashion  as  to 
render  all  further  discussion  impossible.  Twen- 
ty-one years  ago  Eberhard  Nestle,^  in  a  valua- 
ble work,  which  still  retains  its  place  in  the  esti- 

^Die  israelitischen  Eigennamen  nach  ihrer  religios- 
geschichtlichen  Bedeutung,  Haarlem,  1876. 


138  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

mation  of  scholars,  endeavored  to  use  the  per- 
sonal names  of  the  Old  Testament  as  a  touch- 
stone bj  which  to  test  the  authority  of  Hebrew 
tradition.  ISTestle  correctly  divided  Hebrew  per- 
sonal names  into  three  main  groups,  correspond- 
ing to  the  three  stages  of  evolution  observable 
in  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament.  In  the 
first  he  placed  names  compounded  with  El 
(God)  ;  in  the  second  those  belonging  to  the 
period  between  Joshua  and  Solomon  (or  Eli- 
jah), in  which  the  Divine  name  Yahveh  comes 
to  occupy  a  favored  place  beside  El,  the  name 
of  the  Canaanite  deity  Baal  (Lord)  being  sub- 
sequently added ;  and,  lastly,  the  names  of  the 
monarchical  period,  containing,  almost  without 
exception,  the  element  Yahveh  (Yo,  Yahu,  or 
Yah),  and  thus  bearing  witness  to  the  perma- 
nent victory  of  Yahveh  over  Baal.  Moreover, 
in  his  explanation  of  the  ancient  Hebrew  equiva- 
lents of  the  divine  name.  El — viz.,  A6i=my 
father;  ylmmi=my  uncle — Nestle  was  not  far 
wide  of  the  mark.  Indeed,  this  attempt  of  Nes- 
tle's  might  have  found  acceptance,  as  a  solution 
of  the  Pentateuch  problem,  had  not  Wellhausen 
roundly  asserted  that  the  personal  names  of  the 
Mosaic  period,  to  be  found  in  the  Priestly  Code, 
had  been  deliberately  manufactured  in  later 
times  after  an  earlier  pattern,  and  that  their 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.  139 

testimony  was  consequently  worthless.  The 
question  was  thus  left  in  very  much  the  same 
position  as  before. 

"One  of  the  main  objects,  therefore,  which  I 
have  kept  before  me  in  writing  the  present  book, 
has  been  to  adduce  external  evidence — i.  e., 
from  contemporary  inscriptions — to  show  that, 
even  from  the  time  of  Abraham  onwards,  per- 
sonal names  of  the  characteristically  Mosaic 
type  were  in  actual  use  among  a  section  of  the 
Semites  of  Western  Asia,  and  that  it  is  conse- 
quently useless  to  talk  any  longer  of  a  later  post- 
exilic  invention." 

"The  personal  names*  which  occur  in  all  these 
inscriptions — and  especially  in  the  earliest  of 
them,  such  as  the  Minsean  and  early  Sabsean — 
are  of  a  fairly  uniform  type,  their  main  charac- 
teristics being  briefly  as  follows : 

"We  are  struck,  first  of  all,  by  the  fact  that 
though  the  South  Arabian  religion  was  of  a 
polytheistic  character — as  the  ex  veto  offerings 
to  the  various  gods  conclusively  show^ — yet  the 
names  of  the  various  gods  are,  in  almost  every 


*  The  Ancient  Hebreiv  Tradition  as  illustrated  by  the 
Monuments,  by  Dr.  Fritz  Hommel,  1897,  page  79. 

*The  majority  of  the  inscriptions  are  ex  voto  offer- 
ings to  the  gods  ;  even  the  few  purely  historical  monu- 
ments partake  of  this  character. 


l40  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

instance,  excluded  from  personal  names  in  favor 
of  the  generic  term  'i7w='God.' 

"The  usual  sequence  in  which  the  gods  are 
mentioned  in  the  Minsean  inscriptions  is  as  fol- 
lows: Athtar  (pronounced  Astar)  of  Kahadh, 
Wadd,  an-Kar'ih  (another  rendering  is  Nak- 
rah),  Athtar  of  Yalirak,  and  the  Lady  of  Nashk. 
To  these  some  inscriptions  add  an  "Athtar  the 
Ascendant"  (i.  e.,  apparently,  the  Morning 
Star),  and  an  Athtar  of  Yahir.  Athtar  and 
Wadd  occupy  the  highest  place.  The  first  of 
these,  though  originally  borrowed  from  Babylon, 
and  identical  with  the  goddess  Ishtar  (the  Phoe- 
nician Astarte),  is  nevertheless  always  repre- 
sented as  a  male  deity.  He  w^as  also  worshiped 
in  the  Hadramaut,  though  there  his  son  Sin 
(also  a  Babylonian  importation,  but  in  Babylon 
the  relationship  was  reversed.  Sin  being  re- 
garded as  the  father  of  Ishtar)  took  a  more 
prominent  place.  As  to  Wadd,  he  is  the  per- 
sonification of  Love,  just  as  an-Karih®  is  the 
personification  of  Hate:  we  have  here  an  Ara- 
bian counterpart  of  the  hostile  brothers  Marduk 

"This  reading  (in  which  the  "n"  is  assumed  to  be 
equivalent  to  tlie  old  North  Arabian  article)  is  based 
on  the  fact  that  in  certain  South  Arabian  inscriptions 
the  North-Arabian-Phcenician  god  Ba^al  appears  as  an- 
Ba^al  (according  to  another  rendering  Nab^al)  ;  it  is, 
therefore,  probable  that  an-Karih  is  originally  of 
North  Arabian  origin. 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         141 

and  Nirgal  (cf.  Osiris  and  Set).  Yet  in  spite 
of  all  this  we  scarcely  ever  find  anything  but 
ilu=Q(odi,  in  Minsean  personal  names.  Wadd 
occurs  but  seldom  (as  in  Sa^ada-Wadd==^a.di^ 
hath  blessed  it;  or,  better  reading,  8a' du- 
Wadd=^T\iQ  prosperity  of  Wadd),  an-Karih  is 
not  found  at  all ;  the  word  'goddess'  only  once ; 
viz.,  in  <SV(^u-i7a/^^Prosperity  of  the  Goddess 
=Sab8ean  Sa'd-Lat;  and  Athtar  but  rarely,  and 
generally  in  an  abbreviated  form,  Atht;  e.  g., 
Hama-Atht^Athtar  protected  it;  Haupl-Atht 
=Give  health,  O  Athtar;  Bi-Athtar=Bj  Ath- 
tar ;  and  in  a  few  other  instances :  far  more  fre- 
quent are  names  like  Ya]imi-iln;==Miij  God  pro- 
tect, and  Haupi-ilu=God  give  health. 

"We  find  a  very  similar  state  of  things  in 
early  Sabsean  inscriptions.  In  the  Sabsean  Pan- 
theon, Athtar  was  also  worshiped  in  various 
places  and  temples,  but  Wadd  no  longer  accom- 
panies him,  but  Ahndku-hu=his  (i.  e.,  the 
Heaven's)  Lights;  and  in  place  of  the  generic 
'^goddess"  we  have  the  Sun  (Shamsun)  repre- 
sented as  female,  accompanied  by  a  whole  host 
of  other  lesser  gods,  who  must  originally  have 
been  nothing  more  than  local  deities ;  such  as 
Ta'lah,  Awm,  etc.,  etc.  Xow,  it  is  interesting 
to  observe  that  it  is  not  till  we  come  to  neo-Sa- 
bsean  inscriptions  that  Shamsun,  Aum,  Athtar, 


142  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

and  other  names  of  deities  (never,  it  is  signifi- 
cant to  note,  that  of  Almaku-hu)  appear  as  the 
second  element  in  personal  names,  and  even  then 
they  do  not  occur  nearly  so  often  as  iZw^God, 
which  moreover  appears  frequently  as  a  first  ele- 
ment. 

"The  first  deduction — and  a  very  important 
deduction  it  is,  even  when  taken  by  itself — we 
can  draw  from  the  above  facts  is,  that  South 
Arabian  personal  nomenclature  of  the  earliest 
times  contains  practically  no  appellations  save 
those  compounded  with  i7u=God,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  religion  of  those  who  bore  these 
names  was  admittedly  polytheistic.  If  Ave  con- 
sider how  frequently  primitive  ideas  continue  to 
persist  in  the  personal  names  of  any  race,  this 
would  seem  to  indicate  that  there  must  have 
been  a  time  in  the  history  of  Arabia  when  these 
gods — a  number  of  whom,  such  as  Athtar,  Sin, 
and  the  Iladramautic  deity  Anbay  (=j^ebo), 
recently  discovered  by  Glaser,  were  certainly 
imported  from  outside — did  not  receive  wor- 
ship, and  when  some  higher  form  of  devotion  of 
a  type  which  involuntarily  reminds  one  of  what 
we  are  told  about  Melchizedek  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament, must  have  prevailed. 

"Nor  is  this  by  any  means  the  sole  deduction 
to  be  drawn  from  the  facts.    It  is  of  special  in- 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.  143 

terest  for  us  to  learn  all  that  is  said  of  God  in 
South  Arabian  personal  names,  and  particularly 
the  special  periphrases  for  the  simple  word  ilu 
which  were  adopted  in  these  names. 

"In  the  first  place  it  is  characteristic  that 
whenever  the  word  'God'  appears  as  the  first 
element  of  a  name,  it  is  nearly  always  accom- 
panied by  a  sufiix  denoting  the  first  person  sin- 
gular of  the  possessive  pronoun,  thus  ili=mj 
God.  In  the  following  examples  I  have  pur- 
posely chosen  appellations  containing  such  pred- 
icates as  occur  most  frequently  in  the  second 
elements.     For  instance: 


^^  Ili-awwas         my 

God 

has  presented. 

*'  -wahaha         " 

' '    given. 

"  -dhara'a        " 

' '    created 

(or   " 

"    sown  the  seed). 

"  -dharaha       " 

is  resplendent. 

"  -za'ada          " 

commands  awe  (?). 

"  -yada'a          " 

is  (all)  knowing. 

"  -ywpi'a           " 

shines  (or  is  resplend- 
ent). 

"  -Teariba          " 

has  (or  is)  blessed. 

"  -ma-nahata  " 

stepped  into  the  light, 
shone. 

"  -'asza            " 

is  mighty. 

"  -amida         " 

came  forth  (to  help). 

''  -jpadaya        " 

has  set  free. 

144  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 


''lU-rahU 

my 

God  increase !(probably 
imperative). 

"  -rwpa'a 

"    has  healed. 

"  -radsawa 

"    is  well  pleased. 

"  -sharraha 

"    causes  to  thrive. 

"  -sha/ra'a 

"    has  ordained,  ordered. 

"  -sami'a 

"     "  hearkened. 

"  -sa'ada 

"     "  blessed. 

"A  large  number  of  these  predicates  also  oc- 
cur in  reverse  order,  and  in  these  cases  the  verb 
preceding  the  word  ilu  (God)  is  generally  in 
the  so-called  imperfect  tense  (with  a  present,  or, 
probably,  even  an  optative  significance)  ;  e.  g., 
Yasma^-ilu==May  God  listen  to  it !  Yu'aivwis- 
*7M=]VIay  God  grant  it !  and  many  others  of  a 
similar  kind,  including  names  in  which  occur 
verbs  not  mentioned  in  the  above  list,  such  as 
Yadh-hur-ilu=Ma.j  God  remember  it !" 

''We  find  moreover^ — and  here  we  come  to 
the  most  characteristic  feature  of  this  method  of 
name-formation — instead  of  the  names  origin- 
ally beginning  with  the  word  iU=my  God,  a 
number  of  synonymous  terms  (to  some  extent 
periphrases  of  the  Divine  name),  taking  its 
place.  The  more  frequent  and  important  of 
these  terms  are  Abi=Taj  Father,  ammi=iny 
Uncle  (in  the  sense  of  'guardian'  or  'protector')  ; 


Page  84. 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         145 

or,  in  place  of  it,  ]chdli^=mj  Uncle ;  we  also  oc- 
casionally find  dddi=^my  Cousin,  and  ahliv= 
my  Brother,  and,  lastly,  swm-/iu=His  Name. 
But  even  more  general  expressions,  such  as 
dhimr{^=mj  Protection,  yith^i^^my  Help  (or 
Salvation),  nahtv=mj  Splendor,  tsidki^=my 
Justice,  M;ir'i=my  Feat,  with  a  few  others  of 
still  vaguer  significance ;  such  as  ma'di,  tuhha'i 
(perhaps=ma/A:i=my  King?)  and  nash'i,  are 
used  quite  indifferently  with  i7i=my  God.  We 
thus  obtain,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  a  con- 
firmation of  the  phrases  contained  in  the  above 
list  and  a  whole  series  of  additional  predicates 
of  the  Deity,  as  the  following  names — selected 
either  for  their  frequent  occurrence  or  special 
sig-nificance — will  readily  prove : 

''Ahl-amara,  Sumliu-amara,  Khdli-amara, 
Ammi-amara,  Yit¥i-amara,  Wii-^  i-amara^= 
My  father,  etc.,  has  commanded. 

"'4mwi-anisa=My  uncle  is  well  affected. 

"Sumhu-apika=Rk  name  is  powerful  (or 
excellent) ,  with  a  strong  A'-sound. 

"Abi-ivahula,  KhdU-wakula^=My  father,  etc., 

rules. 

"SumJiu-wa(ara=Kis    name    is    above    all 

others. 

''Abi-dhamara^=M.y   father   was   protecting. 


10 


146  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism,. 

"By  far  the  greater  number  of  all  these 
names*  .  .  .  belong  to  the  Minsean  and 
early  Sabsean  inscriptions.  Careful  calculations 
— some  results  of  which  are  given  elsewhere — 
tend  to  show  that  many  of  these  names,  and  es- 
pecially those  beginning  with  Ammi-,  Khali-, 
and  Sumhu-,  appear  less  and  less  frequently  as 
time  goes  on,  and  that  the  vogue  of  this  whole 
system  of  name-formation  practically  began  and 
ended  in  the  earliest  epochs  of  South  Arabian 
history. 

"In  regard  to  the  religious  significance  of  this 
name-system,  it  may,  I  think,  be  confidently  as- 
serted that  no  parallel  can  be  found  for  it  in  the 
nomenclature  of  any  ancient  people.  It  is  true 
that,  in  so  far  as  the  attributes  ascribed  to  the 
Deity  are  concerned,  genuine  Babylonian 
names,  which  we  have  already  considered  at 
some  length,  offer  points  of  resemblance  with 
those  of  South  Arabia.  In  the  Babylonian,  no 
less  than  in  the  South  Arabian,  we  find  evidence 
of  a  belief  that  the  Deity  gives  men  all  things 
that  are  good ;  that  He  blesses,  protects,  rescues, 
assists,  and  delivers;  that  He  is  mighty,  and 
shines  with  a  pure  radiance;  that  He  creates 
and  preserves  all  things,  is  omniscient,  just, 
sublime,  and  kingly,  increases,  and  commands ; 

8  Page  86. 


Theory  of  Names  cmd  Myths.         147 

that  He  is  nevertheless  gracious  and  merciful 
to  all  who  approach  Him  as  suppliants,  even  as 
a  father  is  to  his  children,  and  hearkens  to  the 
prayers  of  them  that  call  upon  Him  and  serve 
Him  in  holy  fear.  If  we  add  to  this  the  fact 
that  in  Babylonian  names,  references  to  ^judg- 
ment,' 'raising  from  the  dead,'  and  'forgiveness' 
occur  with  comparative  frequency,  it  would  al- 
most seem  as  though  the  Babylonians  had  pos- 
sessed a  deeper  sense  of  religion  than  the  Arabs. 
Apart,  however,  from  the  fact  that  with  few  ex- 
ceptions— as,  for  instance,  in  the  case  of  ex- 
pressions like  'hearken'  'know,'  and  one  or  two 
others — Babylonian  and  Arabic  rarely  employ 
the  same  or  even  etymologically  identical  verbs, 
but  generally  use  totally  distinct  words,  even 
when  they  wish  to  express  the  same  or  a  similar 
meaning,  there  is  another  radical  distinction 
between  them,  which  places  the  Arabic  nomen- 
clature on  a  far  higher  and  purer  level  than 
the  Babylonian.  I  refer  to  its  almost  invariable 
use  of  the  word  'God'  {ilu)  as  contrasted  with 
the  polytheism  observable  in  Babylonian  names 
(Sin,  Samas,  Ramman,  Nirgal,  etc.).  Even 
the  synonymous  alternatives  for  the  word  'God,' 
which  are  found  in  South  Arabian  inscriptions 
— such  as  'Father,'  'Uncle,'  'Protection,'  'Help,' 
(cf.  the  analogous  use  of  T5itr=:'rock'  in  the 


148  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

Old  Testament),  and  especially  the  substitute 
'His  name,'  which  occurs  so  frequently — are 
merely  so  many  witnesses  to  the  lofty  conception 
of  the  Deity  entertained  by  the  earliest  Arabs. 
Compared  with  that  held  by  the  Babylonians, 
it  can  only  be  described  as  a  very  advanced  type 
of  Monotheism  not  unworthy  to  rank  with  the 
religion  of  the  patriarch  Abraham  as  presented 
in  the  Biblical  narrative.  If  we  look  at  the  part 
played  by  the  sublime  and  holy  'name  of  Yah- 
veh'  in  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  dealing 
with  Mosaic  times,  we  find  that  a  growing  re- 
luctance to  pronounce  this  sacred  name  led  to 
its  being  replaced  by  the  designation  sliem:=^ 
'Name  (  Korltp^v  ).'  The  fact,  moreover,  that 
the  worship  of  a  number  of  deities  is  promi- 
nently mentioned,  even  in  the  earliest  South 
Arabian  inscriptions,  merely  serves  to  throw 
into  still  stronger  relief  the  persistent  monothe- 
ism of  the  personal  names,  which  even  the  lapse 
of  a  thousand  years  or  so  had  been  powerless  to 
efface.  How  deeply  this  monotheistic  princi- 
ple must  have  rooted  itself  in  the  hearts  of  this 
people  from  the  earliest  ages  is  proved  by  its 
having  been  able,  in  face  of  the  growing  en- 
croachments of  polytheism,  to  retain  for  so  long 
an  undisputed  position  in  their  appellations." 
It  can  not  be  denied  that  Professor  Hommel's 


Theory  of  Names  cmd  Myths.         149 

remarks  are  interesting ;  it  is,  all  the  same,  im- 
possible to  accept  them  as  a  final  and  decisive 
argument.  Much  as  we  are  convinced  that  the 
peoples  and  nations  inhabiting  the  Area  of  Fric- 
tion between  the  great  inland  Empires  about  the 
middle  of  the  second  millennium  B.  C.  were 
not  so  illiterate  and  heathenish  as  ^'Higher  Crit- 
icism" has  attempted  to  make  them  out,  we  can 
not  admit  that  Professor  Hommel's  arguments 
from  their  nomenclature  are  a  clinching  proof 
of  their  exalted  ideas  about  the  Godhead.  The 
examples  he  quotes,  the  names  he  adduces,  look 
indeed  as  if  those  peoples  had  had  a  strongly 
monotheistic  view  of  the  Divinity.  But  being 
based,  as  it  is,  on  purely  philological  reasoning, 
it  can  not  be  considered  as  definitive.  Lan- 
guages, as  was  said  above,  are  very  curious  and 
eccentric  manifestations  of  the  human  mind. 
The  early  Arabian  manner  of  names  may  be 
proof  conclusive  of  ethical  monotheism ;  it  may 
not.  Nations  express  some  of  their  deepest  con- 
victions in  definite  words  and  phrases;  others 
they  donot  express  explicitly  at  all.  The  English, 
whose  law  is  mostly  what  the  Romans  call  jus, 
and  the  Germans  call  Recht,  have  no  term  what- 
ever for  either  jus  (droit)  or  Recht.  We  can 
not,  in  ordinary  fairness,  conclude  anything 
positive  from  the  arguments  proffered  by  Pro- 


150  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

fessor  Hommel.  A  philological  argument  must 
be  complemented  bj  a  psychological  reason  in 
order  to  be  really  conclusive.  This  Professor 
Hommel  has  not  done.  In  all  liis  works  there 
is  not  a  trace  of  psychological  argument.  He  is 
in  this  respect  quite  on  all-fours  with  the  Higher 
Critics,  Had  he  shown  some  psychological  rea- 
son that  compels  us  to  credit  his  early  Arabs 
with  an  exalted  belief  in  ethical  Monotheism, 
then,  and  then  alone,  his  philological  arguments 
would  have  carried  great  force.  Without  such 
psychological  reasons  his  arguments  are  only  in 
the  nature  of  mere  preliminary  remarks.  They 
can  not  prove  very  much.  Bishop  Welldon,  in 
a  vigorous  and  weighty  speech  he  made  as  chair- 
man at  one  of  tlie  lectures  of  the  author,  ac- 
cused the  Encyclopoedia  Bihlica  of  a  deliberate 
attempt  to  undermine  the  religious  contents  of 
the  Bible.  The  learned  bishop  was  quite  right. 
From  the  technical  point  of  view  it  may  be 
added,  that  in  all  the  bulky  volumes  of  the  En- 
cyclopcedia  Bihlica  there  is  not  a  trace  of  those 
forces  that  have  in  all  times  prompted  and  ac- 
tivated man :  psychological  forces.  There  are 
scholastic  arguments  upon  arguments;  quota- 
tions upon  quotations ;  facts  and  demi-facts  in 
their  thousands.  But  there  is  no  psychological 
motive,  no  psychological  force.  Take,  for  in- 
stance, the  example  of  Abraham. 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         151 

For  the  vast  majority  of  the  Higher  Critics, 
Abraham  is  a  myth.  Dozy,  rather  unkindly,  but 
with  a  distinct  gift  for  mineralogy,  turned 
Abraham  into  a  fetish-stone.®  The  redoubtable 
Hungarian  critic,  Professor  Goldzieher,  identi- 
fies Abraham  with  the  starred  heavens,  and  so 
at  least  gives  him  a  position  of  dignity.  ^°  The 
well-known  historian  Stade,  who  enriched  one 
of  the  works  of  syndicated  History,  published 
in  Germany,  Oncken's  series,  with  a  ''History 
of  Israel,"  makes  of  Abraham,  not  only  a  heros 
eponymos,  but  also  a  locality,  a  place  where  re- 
ligious cults  were  practiced. ^^  Abraham,  it  will 
be  seen,  was  thus  a  mviltifarious  being  both  on 
earth  and  in  the  heavens.  We  have  seen  above 
how  Genesis  xiv,  treating  of  Abraham,  has  been 
reduced  to  a  simple  forgery  by  the  ingenuity  of 
the  Higher  Critics. 

Had  pcychological  reasoning  been  applied  to 
the  story  of  Abraham  as  recorded  in  Genesis  xi 
and  the  subsequent  chapters,  most  of  the  argu- 
ments adduced  against  the  historical  existence  of 
the  Patriarch  would  have  fallen  to  the  ground 
at  once.     In  every  authentic  historical  record 


^Dozy,  De  Israeliten  te  Mekka,  1864,  pp.  21  seq. 
^"Goldzieher,  Der  Mythus  bei  den  Hebraeern,   1876, 
pp.  109  seq. 

"Stade,  Geschichte  Israels,  pp.  127  seq. 


152  The  FailuTe  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

there  are  slender  but  unmistakable  symptoms  of 
its  truth,  which  the  forger  does  not  think  of,  and 
which  impress  him  who  knows  something  about 
the  psychology  of  history,  as  irrefragable  evi- 
dence of  authenticity.  Just  as  in  music  the 
master  does  not  show  so  much  in  the  beauty  of 
the  leading  melodies,  in  that  many  a  dilettant 
may  eventually  strike  out  a  very  beautiful 
theme,  but  rather  in  the  side-issues  of  accom- 
paniment, elaboration,  and  ornamentation ;  even 
so  in  historical  records,  side-issues  frequently 
reveal  an  authenticity  which  the  main  themes 
do  not  fully  establish.  It  is  so  with  the  Biblical 
narratives  about  Abraham.  The  Higher  Critics 
have  never  laid  much  stress,  in  fact,  no  stress 
whatever,  on  Genesis  xi,  31,  and  xii,  1,  seq., 
in  which  it  is  pointed  out  that  Abraham  was  a 
foreigner,  a  man  who  had  left  his  original  domi- 
cile at  Ur  in  Chaldaea,  in  order  to  repair  to 
Canaan,  In  this  one  trait,  so  completely  neg- 
lected by  the  Higher  Critics,  there  is  more  solid 
evidence  for  the  historic  existence  of  the  Pa- 
triarch than  there  is  in  all  the  Higher  Critics' 
philological  arguments  to  the  contrary.  A  mere 
forger  would  never  have  thought  of  making 
Abraham  a  foreigner.  He  would  have  made 
him  a  king,  a  prince,  a  great  personage  of  the 
very  country  Avhose  heros    eponymos    he  was 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         153 

made  to  be.  The  idea  of  making  him  a  simple 
foreigner  could  never  have  occurred  to  a  forger. 
A  forger  who  concocts  historical  documents  does 
so  to  please  some  powerful  caste,  or  rank,  or 
person.  In  neither  of  these  cases  can  he  possi- 
bly have  much  motive  to  make  the  Founder  of 
the  nation  a  simple  foreigner.  He  will  make 
him  a  god,  or  the  offspring  of  a  god ;  but  never 
a  mere  foreigner.  In  early  times,  as  well  as  to- 
day, foreigners  were  a  matter  of  pity  or  con- 
tempt. In  reality,  they  are  one  of  the  great  forces 
of  history.  This,  however,  does  not  alter  the 
opinion  that  people  form  about  them.  Even  in 
the  United  States  there  arose,  from  the  hatred  of 
the  foreigner,  the  party  of  the  so-called  "Know- 
nothings  ;"  and  yet  all  Americans  are  practi- 
cally foreigners,  or  the  sons  or  grandsons  of  for- 
eigners. If,  therefore,  Abraham  has  been  made 
by  "concoction,"  "contamination ,"  "genealogical 
tree-making/'  or  by  any  other  process  of  pure 
invention,  then  the  above  passages  in  Genesis 
xi  and  xii  are  inexplicable. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  Abraham  is  taken  as 
an  historic  personage ;  if  it  is  assumed  that  he 
had  an  historic  existence, — then  the  passages 
in  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  chapters  of  Genesis 
shed  a  flood  of  light  on  the  history  of  Abraham 
and  his  time.     As  the  author  remarked  many 


154  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

years  ago,  the  history  of  the  foreigner  has  never 
been  written  up/^    If  we  consider  all  the  stim- 

"The  foreigner,  whether  he  arrives  in  compact 
masses  or  individually,  is  one  of  the  richest  types  of 
history.  As  a  rule,  his  very  status  as  a  foreigner 
quickens  his  ener^^y,  his  wits,  and  endows  him  with  a 
certain  superiority  over  the  native  population,  from 
whose  national  weaknesses  he  is  often  free.  Some  of 
the  main  streams  of  history  have  been  largely  formed 
by  rich  affluents  of  foreigners ;  and  secondary  nations 
have  invariably  been  such  as  remained  unmolested, 
but  also  unfertilized,  by  the  immigration  of  numerous 
foreigners. 

"  No  wiser  word  ever  fell  from  the  lips  of  John 
Selden  than  the  remark  that  they  who  want  to  rule 
people  make  themselves  as  diiferent  from  them  as 
possible.  The  stranger,  by  the  very  isolation  in  which 
he  stands  to  the  people  around  him,  acquires  a  superi- 
ority over  them.  Their  foibles  are  not  his  ;  and  there- 
fore where  they  are  weak  he  is  strong.  Their  virtues 
are  not  his ;  and  therefore  where  they  recoil  he  will 
boldly  push  onward.  Their  perils  are  not  his;  and 
therefore  where  they  succumb  he  will  survive.  But 
chief  of  all,  where  they  are  agitated  by  passion  and 
blinded  by  violent  desires,  he  is  cool  and  collected. 
In  all  history,  strangers  have  exercised  an  enormous 
influence.  As  so  many  other  chapters  of  general  his- 
tory, this,  too,  has  not  yet  been  written.  There  is  no 
general  history  of  strangers  or  foreigners.  Yet  if  we 
pause  to  think,  in  English  history,  of  the  vast  influ- 
ence of  foreigners,  from  William  the  Conqueror,  Simon 
de  iMontfort,  and  William  the  Third,  to  Disraeli ;  or 
in  French  history,  from  Alcuin  of  York  and  Scotus 
Erigena  to  Mazarin  and  Napoleon  ;  in  Austrian  his- 
tory, from  Rudolf  of  Hapsburg  (in  Switzerland)  to 
Prince  Eugene  of  Savoy,  Van  Swieten,  Count  Beust, 
a  Saxon,  and  Count  Andrassy,  a  Hungarian  ;  in  Russia, 
from  the  first  Ruriks  from  Sweden  to  Catherine  the 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         155 

Great,  a  German  princess,— we  can  not  but  acknowl- 
edge that  strangers  have  contributed  to  the  formation 
of  States  and  their  history  very  much  more  than  the 
patriotism  or  vanity  of  nations  is  ready  to  admit."  ^ 

In  a  book  of  singular  interest  on  the  influence  of 
strangers  on  the  economic  history  of  England,  Pro- 
fessor W.  Cunningham  has  arrived  at  the  following 
conclusion:  "It  is  clear  that  for  the  whole  of  our 
textile  manufactures,  for  our  shipping,  for  numberless 
improvements  in  mining,  in  the  hardware  trades  and 
in  agriculture,  and  for  everything  connected  with  the 
organization  of  business,  we  are  deeply  indebted  to 
the  alien  immigrants.  Their  influence  on  other  sides 
of  life  is  less  easy  to  assess  and  trace ;  but  it  is  none 
the  less  real.  It  may  suflRce  to  say  that,  all  through 
the  Middle  Ages,  our  isolated  country  was  behind  the 
I'est  of  Europe  in  many  ways,  and  that  it  has  been 
thi'ough  the  agency  of  immigrants  that  we  have  been 
brought  into  contact  with  higher  civilizations,  and 
thus  been  enabled  to  learn  from  them."^ 

The  influence  of  the  foreigner  in  France  has  been 
no  less  remarkable.  Even  to-day  France  has,  of  all 
European  countries  of  considerable  size,  the  largest 
share  of  immigrants.  In  the  year  1851  there  were 
379,289  aliens  in  France.  This  number  rose,  in  1891, 
to  1,130,211,  the  majority  of  whom  were  Belgians  and 
Italians.^  In  Germany,  on  the  other  hand,  the  number 
of  aliens  in  1890  was  only  433,254.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
the  Franks,  the  Normans,  the  English,  and  a  vast 
number  of  merchants  immigrated  uninterruptedly  into 
the  east,  northwest,  southwest  of  France,  and  into  the 
districts  of  the  famous  Cliampagne  fairs  (at  Provins, 
Troyes,  Bar-sur-Aube,  etc.),  respectively.  The  Ital- 
ians, or  rather  Lombards  and  Florentines,  kept  up  a 

1  From  an  article  of  tlie  author  In  the  Nineteenth  Century 
for  September,  1896. 

2 "Allen  Immigrants  to  England,"  1897,  p.  268. 

STurquan,  Victor,  Le  dcnombrement  des  etrangers  en  France 
(In  Journal  de  la  Societe  de  Statistique  de  Paris,  November, 
1904.) 


156  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

constant  current  of  immigrants.  It  is  no  haphazard 
that  the  three  greatest  orders  of  the  early  Middle 
Ages  were  all  founded  in  France,  but  by  foreigners. 
St.  Bruno  of  Cologne  founded  the  Carthusians ;  St. 
Stephen  Harding  of  Sherborne,  in  Dorsetshire,  was  the 
real  founder  of  the  Cistercians ;  and  St.  Norbert,  of 
Xanten,  in  Westphalia,  founded  the  Premonstraten- 
sians.  The  United  States,  where  inost  people  are 
"foreigners"  settled  for  one  or  two  generations,  is  the 
classical  type  of  what  the  energies  of  newcomers  can 
do,  in  a  country  which  from  its  iminunity  from  invasion 
would  otherwise  be  doomed  to  stagnation ;  and  when 
the  Scotch  by  the  Union  with  England  became  "for- 
eigners," settled  in  England,  they  quickly  developed 
the  marvelous  i-esources  of  subtle  and  tenacious  energy 
whicli  have  immeasurably  extended  their  formerly 
poor  spheres  of  activity.  The  Portuguese,  who  ought 
to  be  the  Scotch  of  Spain,  finally  severed  their  connec- 
tion with  Spain  in  1640,  and  thus  also  with  success. 
The  orthodox  Jews  are  another  historic  example  of 
the  powers  of  "foreigners;"  and  in  the  Jesuits  (arti- 
ficial Jews,  as  it  were)  that  power  has  reached  its  most 
consummate  organization.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten 
that  the  influx  of  the  provincial  into  the  towns,  by 
giving  the  country  people,  through  their  new  status  as 
"  foreigners,"  new  energies  of  the  freshest  vigor,  has 
at  all  times  infused  new  life  into  the  history  of  a 
nation.  All  the  leading  men  of  the  French  Revolution 
were  provincials ;  the  two  greatest  minds  of  the  Eng- 
lish, Shakespeare  and  Newton,  were  provincials;  with 
one  or  two  exceptions,  all  the  great  writers  of  the 
Romans  were  provincials.^ 


■40n  tbe|great  effects  of  the  migration  of  the  country  people 
into  the  towns,  the  most  suggestive  book  Is  Qeorg  Hansen, 
Die  drei  BevulkermigssUi/en  (Munich,  1889,  pp.  407) ;  see  also  the 
literature  of  the  question  in  Goorg  von  Mayer's  Statistik  und 
Gesellschaflslehre  (18'J7),  11,  pp.  124-125. 

The  literature  of  the  "foreigner"  is  both  numerous  and 
dlfllcult  to  rciich.  In  addition  to  the  State  documents, 
statutes,  and  law  cases  of  each  country,  to  the  "proceedings'* 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         157 

ulating  and  energizing  power  inherent  in  for- 
eigners, we  can  not  for  a  moment  doubt  that  the 
Bible,  in  making  the  great  Patriarch  a  for- 
eigner, has  related  one  of  the  broad  facts  of  his- 
tory. His  greatness  closely  corresponds  to  the 
psychological  status,  internal  and  external,  of  a 
foreigner.  Had  he  not  been  a  foreigner,  we 
might  and  should  have  accepted  him  on  the 
strength  of  our  faith.  Having  been  a  foreigner, 
as  the  Holy  Book  states,  we  must  accept  him  as 
an  historic  personage  on  the  strength  of  true  in- 
sight into  the  real  forces  of  history.  In  that  one 
trait  of  Abraham  being  a  foreigner  in  the  land 
where  his  seed  was  to  establish  a  polity — in 
many  respects  the  most  important  of  all  polities 


of  the  various  "  Huguenot  "  societies,  and  tlie  publications  of 
Waldenses,  Moravian  Brethren,  Knights  Templars,  and  sim- 
ilar sects  and  orders,  there  are  many  essays  and  monographs 
scattered  over  the  wliole  of  Europe,  more  especially  about 
the  Italians,  who  for  several  centuries  (from  the  eleventh  to 
the  sixteenth)  were  the  foreigners  par  excellence  in  all  the 
western  countries.  Their  merchants,  doctors,  teachers,  lit- 
erati, and  ecclesiastical  agents  formed  permanent  currents  of 
immigrants,  very  many  of  whom  remained  In  foreign  parts. 
The  student  will  And  ample  bibliographies  on  the  peaceful 
invasion  of  European  countries  by  foreigners  in  Professor  W. 
Cunningham's  "Alien  Immigrants  to  England  "  (1897);  in  L. 
Goldschmldt's  Universalgeschichiedes  Handelsrechts  (1891),  pp. 
180-237;  in  von  Fir cb.s^  BeviJlker ting slehre  {1S9S),  pp.  470-474;  In 
Qeorg  von  Mayer's  Statistik  unci  Oesellschaftslehre  (1897),  pp. 
115-128;  in  Otto  Bremer's  Ethnographic  der  Oermanischen 
Sidmme  (1900),  passim;  and  also  in  Ulysse  Chevalier's  Reper- 
toire des  sources  historiques  du  moven  dge,  second  division 
{T6po- Bibliographic),  under  the  names  of  the  various  coun- 
tries, sections ;  relations  and  details.  Nor  should  the  Anleitung 
zur  deutschen  Landes-  und  Volks/orschung,  edited  by  Alfred 
Klrchhofl  (1882),  be  neglected. 


158  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

— in  that  one  trait,  we  say,  the  full  authenticity 
of  the  Biblical  story  of  Abraham  is  manifested 
to  him  who  can  really  read  history.  As  Pro- 
fessor Sayce  has  well  pointed  out,  the  native 
peoples  of  Canaan  never  showed  much  superior 
energy  in  either  averting  the  attacks  of  the  great 
inland  Empires  of  the  Assyrians,  the  Hittites, 
the  Babylonians,  the  Egyptians,  etc.,  or  in  work- 
ing out  their  own  civilization.^^  Professor 
Sayce  arrives  at  this  statement  by  a  laborious 
study  of  the  new  readings  of  the  Tell-el-Amarna 
tablets.  There  is  a  shorter  way  for  him  who 
has  given  adequate  thought  to  the  study  of  the 
principles  of  history.  What  happened  in  Pal- 
estine was  only  the  very  thing  that  happened 
everywhere  else  where  great  history  was  made. 
In  all  highly  civilized  countries  the  initiative 
forces  were  largely  represented  by  newcomers, 
by  foreigners.  Had  William  the  Conqueror,  or 
some  other  Frenchman,  Dane,  or  Norwegian 
not  conquered  England,  England's  would  have 
been  the  fate  of  Ireland.  The  fierce  energy  of  a 
foreigner  alone  could  have  founded  the  English 
Empire  in  the  Middle  Ages ;  and  by  an  Empire 
alone  was  England  placed  in  a  position  to  avoid 

"See  a  remarkable  article  of  Prof.  Sayce  in  The 
Contemporary  Review  for  August,  1905,  on  "Canaan  in 
the  Century  before  the  Exodus." 


Theory  of  N'a/mes  and  Myths.         159 

sharing  the  fate  of  all  the  other  gi-eat  islands 
of  Europe,  such  as  Crete,  Cyprus,  Rhodes, 
Sicily,  Sardinia,  Corsica,  Ireland.  These 
islands  were  in  all  history  invariably  absorbed 
by  some  Continental  Power  with  resources 
greater  than  islands,  unless  they  found  Empires, 
can  ever  hope  to  wield.^*  The  feat  of  William 
the  Conqueror,  then,  is  the  keynote  of  English 
and  British  history.  If,  now,  some  "Higher 
Critic"  should  try  to  make  out  that  William 
the  Conqueror  was  a  pure  Anglo-Saxon,  that 
critic  would  thereby  commit  the  same  unpar- 
donable sin  against  the  true  spirit  of  history  as 
do  those  Higher  Critics  that  neglect  Genesis  xi, 
31 ;  xii,  1,  scq.,  and  undertake  to  make  of  Abra- 
ham a  mere  myth.  We  said  above  (chapter  ii) 
that  the  existence  of  Abraham  can  not  be  proved 
in  the  same  way  as  can  the  existence  of  Moses. 
The  existence  of  Moses  can  be  proved  in  a  man- 
ner that  amounts  to  a  psychological  necessity. 
The  existence  of  Abraham  can  not  as  yet  be 
proved,  from  the  plane  of  history  alone,  with 
arguments  amounting  to  a  psychological  neces- 
sity. It  can,  however,  be  proved  to  be  a  matter 
of  the  greatest  historic  probability;  and  since 
there  is  no  valid,   or  even  serious,   argument 


"See  the  author's  "Imperialism,"  1905. 


160   The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

against  the  belief  in  Abraham's  historic  exist- 
ence, such  a  very  great  historic  probability  easily 
blends  with  a  final  and  certain  belief  in  the 
reality  of  the  Patriarch. 

Here  is  the  juncture  where  we  must  again  re- 
consider that  much-abused  term,  Myth.  Ever 
since  the  times  of  Dupuis's  (Charles  Frangois) 
Origine  de  tons  les  cultes  (4  vols.,  4°,  1795), 
it  has  become  more  and  more  the  custom  and 
'^method"  of  philological  historians  to  dissolve 
historical  persons  or  events  into  "myths."  Abra- 
ham, of  course,  is  a  myth;  so  is,  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  first  chapter,  Joseph^  Moses,  David ; 
and  so  will,  no  doubt,  soon  be  Jesus, — astral 
myths;  that  is,  solar,  lunar,  zodiacal,  milky- 
way  myths.  After  what  was  said  in  the  pre- 
vious chapter  on  the  methods  of  the  judges  in 
witch-trials,  can  the  the  gentle  reader  entertain 
any  longer  a  doubt  about  the  true  origin  of  all 
this  myth  theory?  Did  not  those  judges  com- 
mit all  their  atrocities  with  the  identical  method 
of  creating  arbitrarily  a  myth,  the  myth  of  the 
witch  ?  The  myth  of  witches'  orgies  with  the 
Evil  One;  of  their  dancing  on  the  Blocksberg; 
of  their  descending  through  chimneys  with  the 
well-known  uncanny  sounds  of  the  wind;  of 
their  making  an  unguent  of  the  fat  of  unbap- 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         161 

tized  children  whom  they  had  murdered/^  etc., 
etc.  ?  The  inquisitorial  method,  apparently  so 
severely  "scientific,"  is  necessarily  bound  to  in- 
dulge in  constant  myth-making.  It  is  part  of 
its  nature.  It  has  no  other  basis  to  work  from. 
As  the  seventeenth  century  judges  created  or 
perfected  the  witch  myth,  even  so  the  Higher 
Critics  created  the  astral  myth.  Once  you  as- 
sume the  reality  of  witches  and  their  witchcraft, 
you  have,  without  any  further  trouble,  the  am- 
plest material  to  work  with,  even  if  the  con- 
crete case  should  be  as  meager  and  flimsy  as 
possible.  We  have  seen  that  the  judge  in  the 
seventeenth  century  could  easily  "make  a  case" 
of  any  person  ever  so  lightly  or  frivolously  ac- 
cused of  witchery.  Nay,  the  less  real  basis  or 
evidence  he  had,  the  bigger  a  "case"  he  could 
make  of  it.  It  is  precisely  so  with  the  modem 
judges  of  the  witch-trial  of  the  Bible.  The  less 
real  evidence  they  have,  the  more  comfortably 
they  proceed.  Their  basis  is  there;  they  have 
it  before  any  sifting  of  evidence.     Their  basis 


^'^In  Janssen's  Geschichte  des  deutschen  Volkes  (Hii^- 
tory  of  the  German  People),  of  which  there  is  an  Englisli 
translation,  vol.  viii  (1894),  there  is  a  very  full  and 
instructive  chapter  on  the  myths  of  witchcraft.  See 
also  Hansen,  Jos.,  Qnellen  .  .  .  zur  Geschichte  des 
Hexenwahns  (Bonn,  1901,  703  pp.) 
11 


162    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

is  their  assumption  of  an  astral  myth.  Once 
you  admit  that,  nobody  can  resist  you.  In  that 
irrepressible  autocar  of  your  own  invention  you 
dash  through  all  the  jungles  and  woods  of  his- 
tory, crushing  all  before  you,  killing  men, 
women,  and  children  on  the  road.  Who,  indeed, 
can  hope  to  escape  it  ?^® 

It  is,  however,  not  sufficient  to  show,  nega- 
tively, the  worthlessness  of  the  conception  of 
myths  generally  held  by  philological  historians 
and  theologians.  We  must  now  point  out  the 
positive  and  constructive  side  of  myths.  It  is 
imperatively  necessary  for  every  serious  student 
of  the  Bible  to  have  a  clear  idea  of  the  nature 
of  the  gi'eat  m}i:hs  of  nations.  For  there  are 
indeed  myths ;  there  are  even  astral  myths.  But 
not  every  myth  is  a  great  myth;  nor  is  every 


^6  In  a  letter  to  The  Record,  London,  the  Rev.  W.  S. 
Lach-Szyrma  makes  the  following  bright  and  profound 
remarks  :  "  Let  us  apply  this  method  (of  astral  myth- 
making)  to  known  and  established  modern  facts,  e.  g. : 
1.  Archbishop  Whately  proved,  in  his  '  Historic  Doubts 
Relative  to  Napoleon  Bonaparte,'  that  Napoleon  (a 
contemporary  of  the  archbishop)  was  merely  a  sun- 
myth.  .  .  .  2.  In  Macmillan^s  Marjazine  it  has  been 
proved  in  the  brilliant  article  on  the  *  Great  (iladstone 
Myth,'  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  myth  of  the  sun, 
and  Mr.  Chamberlain  a  myth  of  a  cloud.  ...  By 
higher  critical  methods  they  have  been  proved  myths. 
3.  M.  Henri  Gaidoz,  of  Paris,  has  proved  in  his  article, 
Que  M.  Max  Muller  n'a  jamais  €xist(^  ('  that  Mr.  M, 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         163 

great  myth  an  astral  myth.  He  who  wants  to 
fortify  himself  against  the  insidious  argimients 
of  Higher  Critics  will  do  best  by  trying  to  form 
a  distinct  and  adequate  idea  of  how  the  great 
myths  of  nations  arise.  And  in  this  respect  he 
can  not  do  better  than  throw  overboard  all  the 
current  notions  about  the  origin  of  myths  as 
taught  by  the  philological  historians  and  most 
of  the  folklorists.  If  one  were  to  believe  the 
*'mythologists"ifrom  Creuzer  to  Gruppe,  myths 
arose  in  ancient  times  as  a  sort  of  day-dream- 
ing practiced  by  idling  bards.  Some  individ- 
uals, the  mythologists  imagine,  who  had  nothing 
else  to  do,  lay  down  basking  in  the  lovely  sun 
of  Delos  or  Crete,  and,  giving  free  play  to  their 
fancy,  invented  the  myths  of  the  Amazons,  of 
the  daughters  of  Danaos,  of  Hercules,  of  The- 


MllUer  has  never  existed '),  by  M.  Miiller's  own  canons 
of  philological  criticism,  that  he  was  a  mere  sun-myth, 
and  his  house  in  the  Parks,  Oxford,  as  mythical  as 
the  fairy  palace  in  '  Beauty  and  the  Beast.'  Nay, 
more,  I  am  perfectly  prepared  to  give  strong  evidence 
on  higher  critical  gi-ounds  that  Dr.  Driver  himself  is  a 
myth,  and  not  a  real  person.  The  history  of  the  Vic- 
torian Age  in  England  is  full  of  accidental  coinci- 
dences such  as  a  Higher  Critic  in  the  future  might  use 
to  cast  doubts  on  facts — e.  g.,  the  three  Roman  Catho- 
lic cardinals  at  this  period  were  Wiseman  (the  prudent 
founder  of  the  Roman  aggression)  ;  Newman,  the  new 
convert ;  Manning,  who  '  manned '  his  sect  with  so 
many  followers."    (The  Record,  London,  July  28, 1905.) 


164  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

seus  and  Ariadne.  Any  small  phenomenon  of 
the  soil,  or  the  hills  and  rivulets  of  their  country 
in  Argos  or  Boeotia  was,  it  is  held,  sufficient 
reason  or  stimulant  to  give  rise  to  a  great  myth. 
Thus,  the  significant  myth  of  Danaos  was  ''sug- 
gested" by  the  insig-nificant  torrent  Inachos 
(now  Panitsa)  in  Argolis.  The  wonderful 
myth  of  the  Amazons  "probably"  arose  from 
retrospective  "construction"  of  some  Athenian 
cults,  etc. 

The  mythologists  forget,  as  usual,  the  most 
elementary  considerations  of  psychology.  Myth- 
making  is  no  mere  day-dreaming;  otherwise 
the  laziest  people,  such  as  those  of  Naples  or 
Seville  ought  to  have  endowed  us  with  the  most 
charming  and  significant  myths.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  great  m^^hs  invariably  come  from  great, 
that  is  exceedingly  energetic  and  active  people. 
Great  myths  are  for  the  second  millennium 
B.  C.  what  great  literature  was  for  the  fifth 
century  B.  C.  in  Hellas.  Unless  a  nation's 
imagination  is  stirred  to  its  very  base  by  actions 
of  vital  importance,  that  nation  will  have 
neither  the  force  nor  the  desire  of  creating  great 
myths.  It  need  scarcely  be  added  that  great 
myths  are  such  as  contain  not  only  an  interest- 
ing story,  but  more  especially  some  remarkable 
philosophic,  artistic,  or  religious  principle,  some 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         165 

rich  spiritual  possibility  of  thought.  The  myth, 
for  instance,  of  the  Amazons,  whatever  else  it 
may,  and  does,  indicate  in  point  of  history,  is, 
quite  independently  of  its  historical  meaning, 
an  invaluable  expression  of  an  abiding  type  of 
womanhood  through  all  ages.  The  myth  of  the 
daughters  of  Danaos  similarly  expresses  an 
abiding  phenomenon  in  nature ;  her  supremacy 
over  man  as  shown  by  the  alternate  abundance 
and  drought  of  the  soil.  Myths  of  that  kind 
are,  like  great  literature  in  later  periods,  the 
reflex  of  immense  national  aspirations  and 
struggles.  Without  Philip  Second's  Armada 
there  would  have  been  no  Shakespeare.  The 
glorious  and  gigantic  effort  of  Elizabethan  Eng- 
land to  beat  back  the  then  greatest  Power  in 
Europe  and  America,  so  intensified  the  whole 
mental  organization  of  the  English  that,  focus- 
sing themselves,  as  it  were,  in  Shakespeare,  they 
produced  Hamlet,  and  King  Lear,  and  Richard 
III.  Without  England's  mighty  fight  in  the 
times  of  the  War  of  the  Spanish  Succession 
(1701-1713) — when  England  herself  was,  as  it 
were,  alone  in  her  little  island  trying  to  build 
her  a  bigger  hut,  the  British  Empire — no  Defoe 
could  ever  have  written  the  greatest  book  for 
boys,  "Robinson  Crusoe."  Defoe's  book  incar- 
nates a  type,  an  abiding  type  of  youthful  man- 


166  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

hood  and  self-reliance,  and  was  accordingly  bom 
out  of  England's  own  "Robinsonade."  Or  did 
the  myth  of  "The  Wandering  Jew,"  or  that  of 
"The  Flying  Dutchman,"  arise  out  of  mere  con- 
templation of  pictures,  or  mere  day-dreaming? 
Great  myths,  then,  whether  astral  or  no,  arise 
only  out  of  great  and  lasting  struggles  of  high- 
strung  nations.  Where  there  are  no  such  strug- 
gles ;  where  all  the  forces  of  a  nation  are  not  be- 
ing drawn  upon  constantly  and  under  great 
stress  of  danger  or  hope,  there  the  imagination 
of  the  nation  remains  frigid  and  stale.  It  is 
quite  true  that  most  nations  have  stories  and 
myths  about  things  in  heaven  and  on  earth,  and 
that  there  are,  in  outward  form,  very  remarka- 
ble similarities  and  coincidences  between  the 
myths, — for  instance,  of  the  Greeks  and  those 
of  other  nations, ^^  The  marble  is  more  or  less 
the  same ;  but  the  Athenians  alone  had  the  Par- 
thenon. In  Greek  myths  alone  there  are,  as  a 
rule,  those  fruitful  germs  of  thought  artistic, 
philosophic,  and  religious  that  render  them  ever- 


^^ Compare,  for  instance,  Hartland,  E.  S.,  "Legend 
of  Perseus"  (3  vol.  1894-1896)  ;  Mannhardt's  works  on 
Greek  Cults ;  Girard  de  Rialle,  Mythologie  Compar^e 
(1878),  Meyer,  Elard  Ji. ,  Indogermanische  Mythen  (1888- 
87)  ;  V.  D.  Gehyn,  Essais  de  mythologie  comparee  (1885)  ; 
J.  G.  Frazer's  inexhaustible  "Golden  Bough"  and 
"Pausanius." 


Theory  of  Nomies  aud  Myths.         167 

interesting  and  ever-instructive.  They  reflect  as 
much  light  as  their  makers  absorbed  in  their 
upward  struggle  for  the  sunny  heights  of  Free- 
dom, and  Beauty,  and  Power. 

If  we  now  apply  these  principles  to  the  Bibli- 
cal story  of  Abraham,  we  can  not  but  gain  a  new 
reason  for  bowing  to  the  honesty  and  authen- 
ticity of  the  Holy  Book.  It  is  related  in  Gene- 
sis that  Abraham  had  indeed  an  exalted  idea  of 
the  Godhead ;  that  he  was,  in  a  measure,  the  an- 
cestor and  founder  of  the  Israelites ;  that  he,  too, 
had  some  little  warring  and  fighting;  but  that, 
on  the  whole,  his  was  a  life  of  patriarchal 
quietude  and  composure.  In  perfect  harmony 
with  that  beautifully  even  life,  not  the  faintest 
attempt  at  mythifying  Abraham  is  made.  He 
is  represented  as  a  prudent,  practical  man,  who 
was  distinctly  aware  of  the  preliminary,  if 
necessary,  character  of  his  vocation.  ISTo  vast 
and  abiding  principle  of  philosophy,  art,  or 
politics  is  meant  to  be  represented  by  him.  In 
point  of  religion,  indeed,  he  is  the  representa- 
tive of  a  great  principle  in  its  initial  stage ;  but 
in  every  other  respect  he  is  only  representative 
of  a  godly  and  well-meaning  patriarch.  Such  a 
good  person  can  not  be  mythified  by  a  nation 
like  the  Israelites,  who,  subsequently  to  Abra- 
ham, went  through  the  most  Titanic  struggles  a 


168  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

nation  has  ever  gone  through.  A  patriarch  like 
Abraham  does  not  kindle  the  mythological  im- 
agination of  a  nation  like  the  Israelites.  They 
may  have  done  so  {in  theory  this  much  may  be 
admitted)  with  a  man  like  Samson  or  David ;  it 
has  still  to  be  proved  that  they  have  done  so.  But 
with  Abraham  they  could  not  have  done  it. 
This  is  psychologically  in  the  highest  degree 
improbable;  and  unless  the  most  unequivocal 
and  conclusive  proof  is  adduced  to  the  con- 
trary, the  astralization  of  Abraham  can  not  be 
admitted  as  a  subject  of  serious  discussion. 

We  have  thus  seen,  from  more  than  one  stand- 
point, that  the  story  of  Abraham  as  given  in 
Genesis  is,  when  read  in  the  light  of  ordinary 
historic  psychology,  one  of  complete  credibility. 
It  puts  to  shame  all  the  attempts  of  the  "Higher 
Critics"  to  strike  it  out  as  a,  forgery,  or  as  an 
astral  myth.  It  stands  where  it  stood  before; 
and  at  the  threshold  of  our  religious  history  we 
are  still  happy  to  greet  the  venerable  patriarch 
who  was  privileged  by  the  Lord  to  be  the  first  of 
those  great  Personalities  through  whom  His 
Word  was  to  reach  mankind.  We  shall  see,  in 
the  next  chapter,  that  the  trend  of  Hebrew  his- 
tory confirms  at  its  furthest  end  what  the  Bible 
tells  us  happened  at  its  outset.  Abraham  stands 
to  the  beginning  of  Hebrew  history  exactly  in 


Theory  of  Names  and  Myths.         169 

the  same  relation  in  which  the  Judges,  Kings, 
and  Prophets  stand  to  its  middle,  and  Jesus  and 
the  apostles  to  its  termination.  It  is  all  of  a 
piece.  It  is  like  the  world  itself.  The  world 
was  not  made  by  a  specialist,  but  by  an  Uni- 
versalist  who  impressed  upon  it  His  Thought 
and  Will :  One  Infinite  Idea. 


CHAPTER  Y. 

The  Argument  from  the  Prophets  and  from 
THE  Theory  of  Personality. 


CHAPTER  V. 

The    Argument    from    the    Prophets    and 
EROM    the    Theory   of    Personality. 

In  the  four  preceding  chapters  we  have  ap- 
proached the  question  of  the  failure  of  Higher 
Criticism  from  four  different  standpoints;  we 
are  now  proceeding  to  a  fifth  point  of  view,  a 
fifth  plane  from  which  we  mean  to  lead  the 
reader  to  the  conviction  that  "Higher  Criti- 
cism" is  one  of  the  worst  of  scientific  failures 
recorded  in  the  annals  of  research. 

This  time  we  shall  start  from  the  eighth  cen- 
tury B.  C,  and  work  backwards.  We  shall  do 
what  has  always  appeared  to  serious  students 
and  thinkers  one  of  the  safest  ways  of  ensuring 
solid  results.  We  start  from  the  eighth  century 
B.  C,  because  from  that  century  we  have 
prophetic  writings  which  very  few  even  of  the 
Higher  Critics  have  seriously  declared  to  be  in- 
authentic.  We  mean,  in  the  first  place,  the 
writings  of  Amos  and  Hosea.  It  is  true  that 
173 


174  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

Amos  has  not  quite  escaped  the  inquisitorial  in- 
sinuations and  doubts  of  the  Higher  Critics. 
How  could  he,  or,  for  the  matter  of  that,  any 
one  else  ?  We  saw  that  the  inquisitorial  method 
of  the  Higher  Critics  allows  them  to  cast  doubts 
on  anything,  and  on  any  one ;  to  prove  or  to  dis- 
prove anything  they  like ;  to  accept  or  to  con- 
demn just  as  they  fancy  it.  Far  from  being  as- 
tounded at  having  fought  shy,  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent, of  the  Prophets,  we  must  rather  expect 
them  to  declare,  in  cor  pore,  what  at  present  is 
said  by  a  few  of  them,  such  as  E.  Havet,  M. 
Vemes,  and  others ;  namely,  that  ''the  Prophetic 
Books,  far  from  having  that  high  antiquity 
which  is  attributed  to  them,  were  not  written  be- 
fore the  second  century  B.  C."^  In  fact,  the 
lenience  and  patience  of  the  Higher  Critics  with 
regard  to  the  Prophets  is  inconceivable.  Hav- 
ing victoriously  reduced  Abraham,  Moses, 
Joshua,  Samson,  and  David  to  nice  little  astral 
myths,  how  can  they  tarry  so  long  over  mere 
Prophets ;  that  is,  men  mostly  of  lowly  origin, 
with  no  official  character,  no  particular  social 
status,  nor  men  of  independent  means.      The 


^  Havet,  E.,  La  modernite  des  PropMtes  (1891)  p.  7: 
"...  que  les  livres  prophetiques,  loin  d'avoir  la 
haute  antiquite  qu'on  leur  attribuait,  n'avaient  ete  ecritt 
qu'cl  la  fin  du  11"  siecle  avant  notre  ere," 


Prophets  cmd  Theory  of  Personality.    175 

Higher  Critics,  do"^vii  to  ^yellha^lsen,  do,  it  is 
true,  their  best  to  apply  to  the  Prophets  as  many 
pinpricks  as  possible.  They  deny  the  authen- 
ticity of  Amos  ii,  4,  5 — just  4,  5  f  then  also  iv, 
13 ;  V,  8  ;  ix,  5  ;^  etc.  But  is  this  petty  warfare 
really  worthy  of  men  so  grand  and  redoubtable  ? 
Smaller  enemies  than  the  Prophets  have  long  ex- 
claimed, "Sword-cuts,  if  you  please,  but  no  pin- 
pricks!" Would  it  not  be  more  charitable  to 
use  against  the  Prophets  the  full  armory  of  the 
torture,  the  full  impact  of  the  scientific  instru- 
ments so  carefully  determined  by  the  judo;es  in 
witch-trials  of  the  seventeenth  century  ?  Would 
it  not  be  more  in  keeping  with  the  strict  scien- 
tific method  of  Higher  Criticism  to  say  to  the 
Prophets:  "Gentlemen,  we  regret,  but  your 
pretense  of  having  lived  in  the  eighth  or  the 
seventh  century  B.  C,  and  of  having  written 
certain  Prophetic  writings,  is  really  quite  unac- 
ceptable. In  the  first  place,  you  are  fully  aware 
of  the  fact  that  you  never  lived  at  all,  and  that 
your  hypothetical  existence  at  present  you  owe 
simply  to  our  need  of  proving  that  you  too  are 
astral  myths.    Yours  is  what  our  teachers  would 

^Duhm,  Theologie  der  Propheten  (1875),  p.  119;  like- 
wise Stade,  Geschichte  Israels,  p.  571 ;  also  Oort,  a 
Dutch  Higher  Critic  ;  and  Cornill,  the  musical  Higher 
Critic  ;  apud  Konig,  Einleitung,  p.  303. 

^Konig,  1.  c. 


176  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

have  called  a  sub-potential  existence  for  the  sake 
of  argument.  True^  some  people  refer  to 
numerous  pieces  of  evidence  coming  from  As- 
syrian, and  other  independent  sources,  confirm- 
ing many  a  detail  in  your  writings.  But  is  it 
not  evident  in  your  case,  as  it  was  in  the  case  of 
Abraham,  that  the  more  local  color  one  can  show 
to  exist  in  your  pretended  writings,  the  more 
certain  it  becomes  that,  as  our  colleague  Vernes 
profoundly  said,*  your  local  color  was  probably 
superimposed  by  a  late  and  latest  interpolator  ? 
Quien  sabe  ?  as  our  friends,  the  sagacious  Span- 
iards, say.  Interpolators  are  so  wily.  But  we 
are  more  than  a  match  for  such  wiles.  The 
more  subtle  the  wiles,  the  more  subtle  the 
meshes  in  which  we  capture  them.  The  idea  of 
Prophets  and  Prophetic  writings,  we  admit,  is 
not  quite  bad.  It  suits  the  agitated  times  of 
the  eighth  century  B.  C.  to  perfection.  It  is 
just  what  one  might  expect  in  times  of  great 
tribulation,  and  we  are  not  unwilling  to  credit 
the  interpolator  with  a  large  measure  of  historic 
-finesse.  He  clearly  thought  that  when  the  Athe- 
nians in  times  of  need  solicited  the  help  of  Solon 
— provided  they  ever  did  do  so,  which  we  must 
leave  to  the  judgment  of  our  philological  col- 
leagues ;  or  if  the  Florentines  implored  the  help 

■*  Vernes,  Precis  d'histoire  juive  (1889),  p.  805. 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  177 

of  Savonarola,  and  the  Genevans  that  of  Cal- 
vin,— then  the  Hebrews  of  the  eighth  century 
B.  C.  may  also  have  desired  and  needed  some 
such  help  from  what  in  their  ignorance  they 
called  Prophets.  But,  as  already  remarked,  the 
very  finesse  of  the  interpolator  betrays  him.  So 
nice  a  harmony  between  what  is  and  what  is  ex- 
pected to  be,  is  in  the  highest  degree  suspicious. 
Gentlemen,  we  regret  to  say  that  clever  inter- 
polators have  given  you  an  utterly  false  impres- 
sion of  your  existence." 

The  preceding  oration  of  the  Higher  Critics, 
although  not  directly  quotable  from  their  writ- 
ings is,  as  every  student  of  the  matter  knows,  a 
true  resume  of  the  drift  of  their  endless  argu- 
ments about  the  Prophetic  writings.  The 
method  they  use  must  inevitably  lead  them  to 
a  rejection  of  the  most  probable  events  and  per- 
sons ;  and  it  is  no  serious  exaggeration  to  say 
that  Higher  Critics,  after  successfully  exter- 
minating the  great  personalities  of  history, 
must,  out  of  sheer  lack  of  persons  to  be  dissolved 
in  air,  attack  and  destroy,  without  necessarily 
astralizing  one  another.  Romulus  killed 
Remus;  Professor  Niebuhr  killed  Romulus; 
Professors  Gerlach  and  Bachofen  killed  Pro- 
fessor I^iebuhr;  and  so  in  infinitum. 

This  preposterous  method  must,  and  we  con- 
12 


178  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

fidently  trust  will,  come  to  its  overdue  end.  It 
must,  at  any  rate,  be  made  clear  to  the  millions 
of  honest  people  who  want  to  use  their  Bible  as 
their  strongest  and  most  comforting  consolation 
for  life  and  after-life,  that  all  the  arguments  of 
the  Higher  Critics  have  so  far  not  been  able  to 
move  a  stone  from  the  edifice  inside  which  over 
a  hundred  generations  have  sought  and  found 
their  spiritual  bliss.  In  the  present  chapter 
\ve  want  to  show  that  Amos  and  Hosea  alone, 
although  by  far  not  the  greatest  of  the  Prophets, 
are  ii-refragable  evidence  of  the  authenticity  of 
the  Pentateuch.  We  want  to  show  that  he  who 
admits  that  Amos  and  Hosea  said,  by  about  the 
middle  of  the  eighth  century  B.  C,  what  in  their 
writings  they  are  reported  to  have  said  and 
written, — ^he,  we  say,  who  accepts  Amos  and 
Hosea,  has  thereby  fully  accepted  the  Penta- 
teuch. It  is  well  kno^\^l  that  Cuvier,  the  great 
naturalist,  used  to  declare,  "Give  me  one  tooth 
of  an  animal,  and  I  will  reconstruct  the  whole 
animal."  With  even  greater  force  the  historian, 
let  alone  the  theologian,  may  say,  ''Give  me 
Amos  and  Hosea,  and  I  will  psychologically 
compel  you  to  admit  the  authenticity  of  the 
Pentateuch." 

There  are  two  great  and  broad  facts  pervad- 
ing the  writings  of  Amos  and  Hosea.     One  is 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  179 

their  firm  and  fervent  belief  in  ethical  Mono- 
theism; the  other  is  their  firm  belief  in  the 
Egyptian  slavery  of  the  Israelites  and  in  the 
Exodus.  It  is  these  two  facts  from  which,  as 
from  a  safe  leaping-board,  we  may  venture  to 
throw  ourselves  into  the  "darkness"  of  the  cen- 
turies before  Amos.  We  again,  and  purposely, 
disregard  here  merely  religious  or  doctrinal  con- 
siderations.   We  are  nothing  but  dry  historians. 

It  will  be  necessary  to  premise  the  requisite 
passages  from  Amos  and  Hosea : 

Amos  (first  half  of  the  eighth  century  B.  C.) 
Chapter  ii,  verse  10: 

"Also  I  brought  you  up  from  the  land  of 
Egypt,  and  led  you  forty  years  through  the  wil- 
derness, to  possess  the  land  of  the  Amorite." 

Chapter  iii,  verse  1 : 

"Hear  this  word  that  the  Lord  hath  spoken 
against  you,  O  children  of  Israel,  against  the 
whole  family  which  I  brought  up  from  the  land 
of  Egypt  saying." 

Chapter  iii,  verse  7 : 

"Surely  the  Lord  God  will  do  nothing,  but 
He  revealeth  His  secret  unto  His  servants  the 
prophets." 

Chapter  iv,  verse  11 : 

"I  have  overthroAvn  some  of  you,  as  God  over- 
threw Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  and  ye  were  as  a 


180  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

firebrand  plucked  out  of  the  burning:  yet  have 
ye  not  returned  unto  Me,  saith  the  Lord." 

ChajDter  iv,  verses  12  and  13  : 

"Therefore  thus  will  I  do  unto  thee,  O  Israel : 
and  because  I  will  do  this  unto  thee,  prepare  to 
meet  thy  God,  O  Israel. 

"For,  lo,  He  that  formeth  the  mountains,  and 
createth  the  wind,  and  declareth  unto  man  what 
in  His  thought,  that  maketh  the  morning  dark- 
ness and  treadeth  upon  the  high  places  of  the 
earth,  the  Lord,  the  God  of  hosts,  is  His  name." 

Chapter  ix,  verse  5  : 

"And  the  Lord  God  of  hosts  v.i  He  that  touch- 
eth  the  land,  and  it  shall  melt,  and  all  that  dwell 
therein  shall  mourn :  and  it  shall  rise  up  wholly 
like  a  flood ;  and  shall  be  drowned,  as  by  the 
flood  of  Egypt." 

Hosea  (middle  of  eighth  century  B.  C.) 
Chapter  i,  verses  9  and  10 : 

"Then  said  God,  Ye  are  not  My  people,  and 
I  will  not  be  your  God. 

"Yet  the  number  of  the  children  of  Israel 
shall  be  as  the  sand  of  the  sea,  which  can  not  be 
measured  nor  numbered ;  and  it  shall  come  to 
pass,  that  in  the  place  where  it  was  said  unto 
them.  Ye  are  not  My  people,  there  it  shall  bo 
said  unto  them.  Ye  are  the  sons  of  the  livin.'^ 
God." 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  181 

Chapter  ii,  verses  19,  21,  23 : 

"And  I  will  betroth  thee  unto  me  for  ever; 
yea,  I  will  betroth  thee  unto  me  in  righteousness, 
and  in  judgment,  and  in  loving  kindness,  and  in 
mercies." 

''And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  day,  I  will 
hear,  saith  the  Lord,  I  will  hear  the  heavens, 
and  they  shall  hear  the  earth." 

".  .  .  I  will  say  to  them  which  were  not 
My  people,  Thou  are  My  people ;  and  they  shall 
say,  Thou  art  my  God." 

Chapter  iii,  verse  5  : 

"Afterwards  shall  the  children  of  Israel  re- 
turn, and  seek  the  Lord  their  God.     .     .     ." 

Chapter  iv,  verse  1 : 

"Hear  the  w^ord  of  the  Lord,  ye  children  of 
Israel:  for  the  Lord  hath  a  controversy  with 
the  inhabitants  of  the  land,  because  there  is  no 
truth,  nor  mercy,  nor  knowledge  of  God  in  the 
land." 

Chapter  ii,  verse  15  : 

"And  I  will  give  her  her  vineyards  from 
thence,  and  the  valley  of  Achor  for  a  door  of 
hope :  and  she  shall  sing  there,  as  in  the  days  of 
her  youth,  and  as  in  the  day  when  she  came  up 
out  of  the  land  of  Egypt." 

Chapter  viii,  verses  13  and  11: : 

".     .     .     But  the  Lord  accepteth  them  not; 


182    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

now  will  he  remember  their  iniquity,  and  visit 
their  sins :  they  shall  return  to  Egypt. 

"For  Israel  hath  forgotten  his  Maker,  and 
buildeth  temples.     .     .     ." 

Chapter  xi,  verse  1 : 

"When  Israel  was  a  child,  then  I  loved  him, 
and  called  My  son  out  of  Egypt." 

Chapter  xi,  verse  9  : 

".  .  .  Eor  I  am  God,  and  not  man ;  the 
Holy  One  in  the  midst  of  thee.     .     .     ." 

Chapter  xii,  verse  9  : 

"And  I  that  am  the  Lord  thy  God  from  the 
land  of  Egypt  will  yet  make  thee  to  dwell  in 
tabernacles.     .     .     ." 

Chapter  xii,  verses  12  and  13 : 

"And  Jacob  fled  into  the  country  of  Syria, 
and  Israel  ser\^ed  for  a  wife,  and  for  a  wife  he 
kept  sheep. 

"And  by  a  prophet  the  Lord  brought  Israel 
out  of  Egypt,  and  by  a  prophet  was  he  pre- 
served." 

Chapter  xiii,  verses  4  and  5 : 

"Yet  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God  from  the  land 
of  Egypt,  and  thou  shalt  know  no  god  but  Me : 
for  there  is  no  Savior  beside  Me. 

"I  did  know  thee  in  the  wilderness,  in  the 
land  of  great  drought." 


Projphets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  183 

Chapter  xiii,  verse  14 : 

"I  will  ransom  them  from  the  power  of  the 
grave ;  I  will  redeem  them  from  death.    .    .    ." 

It  is  impossible  to  deny  that  the  preceding 
passages  contain  a  clear,  firm,  and  fervent  be- 
lief in  ethical  Monotheism.  J^or  has  that  ever 
been  donbted.  A  number  of  Higher  Critics 
have,  as  we  have  seen,  opined  that  this  verse  or 
the  other  in  Amos  might  be  an  interpolation; 
and  a  few  "Highest"  Critics  have  relegated 
Amos,  together  with  all  the  other  Prophets,  or 
rather  Prophetic  writings,  to  the  second  century 
B.  C.  We  may  therefore  truly  contend  that  the 
general  trend  of  theologians  and  historians  is 
still  in  favor  of  the  statement  that  the  above 
passages  from  Amos  and  Ilosea  were  actually 
written  in  the  eighth  century  B.  C. 

This  is  all  that  is  needed  for  our  purpose. 
If  the  preceding  passages  may  be,  and  are, 
taken  as  having  been  made  in  the  eighth  century 
B.  C,  then  it  is  implicitly  and  explicitly  proved 
that  in  the  kingdoms  of  Israel  and  Judah  there 
was,  as  early  as  the  eighth  century  B.  C,  a  clear 
and  full  belief  in  ethical  Monotheism. 

This  much  the  rankest  Higher  Critic  would 
not  hesitate  to  admit.  He  does  so,  because  in- 
wardly he  thinks  that,  in  admitting  that,  he  has 


184   The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

admitted  verj  little.  Again,  applying  his  fa- 
vorite category  of  the  Possible  he  says:  "In 
admitting  that,  in  the  first  half  of  the  eighth 
century  B.  C,  there  were,  in  the  kingdoms  of 
Israel  and  Judah,  men  who  had  a  fair  concep- 
tion of  ethical  Monotheism,  I  have  by  no  means 
attributed  to  the  then  Hebrews  any  spiritual 
superiority  at  all.  They  had,  or  some  of  them 
had,  a  good  notion  of  ethical  Monotheism;  but 
could  they  not  possibly  have  derived  it  from 
the  infinitely  higher  civilized  Babylonians  or 
Egyptians  ?  Might  it  not  have  been  a  mere 
copy  of  archaic,  or,  at  any  rate,  previous  no- 
tions taught  by  the  Babylonians  ?  There  was, 
for  centuries  before  Amos,  a  very  lively  inter- 
course of  commerce  and  traffic  between  Palestine 
on  the  one  hand,  and  Egypt  and  Babylon  on  the 
other.  With  the  merchant  and  trader  came  also, 
no  doubt,  a  little  literature.  The  merchant  who 
sold  his  earthenware,  his  fine  clothes,  or  jewelry, 
might  he  not  also  sell  a  'book'  or  two?  Might 
not  in  one  of  those  clay  tablets  have  been  more 
than  one  suggestion  of  a  belief  in  Monotheism 
of  which  we  have  numerous  traces  in  Baby- 
lonian and  Egyptian  literature  ?  In  selling  his 
material  goods,  might  not  the  clever  Babylonian 
trader  have  sold  also  a  little  Monotheism  too  ? 
There  is  no  inherent  impossibility  in  this.     In 


Projphets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  185 

fact,  do  not  ideas  spread  in  tliat  way  ?  Is  there 
not  a  silent  migration  of  ideas,  as,  alas !  there  is 
one  of  microbes  ?  Such  germs  and  ideas  might 
very  well  have  fallen  on  congenial  ground.  The 
Hebrews  were  rather  clever  people ;  they  have 
at  all  times  had  a  marked  genius  for  assimila- 
tion both  of  things  and  of  ideas.  They  assimi- 
lated the  Babylonian  or  Egyptian  ideas  re 
Monotheism,  and,  finding  them  effective,  they 
advertised  them  with  a  vengeance.  While, 
therefore,  we  can  not  deny  that  there  is  indeed 
a  belief  in  ethical  Monotheism  in  Amos  and 
Hosea,  we  do  not  in  the  least  mean  to  admit  that 
this  redounds  to  the  spiritual  glory  of  the  He- 
brews. They  were,  not  long  before  the  eighth 
century  B.  C,  still  on  the  religious  level  of 
their  neighbors — that  is,  mere  idolators — and 
therefore  Amos  and  Hosea  do  not  prove  that 
their  ethical  Monotheism  was  a  distinctive  fea- 
ture of  the  Hebrew  nation  at  all.  Least  of  all 
does  it  prove  the  Exodus  and  Moses." 

It  were  idle  to  fill  the  margins  of  this  little 
book  with  quotations  from  the  works  of  the 
"Higher  Critics"  in  which  the  preceding  pseudo- 
arguments  have  been  advanced,  as  a  whole  or  in 
parts.  No  one  can  have  read  those  works  with- 
out being  aware  that  the  ground-base  of  their 
reasoning  consists  of  the  assumption  that  the 


186   The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

Monotheism  of  the  ancient  Hebrews  was  a  thing 
borrowed,  given,  or  '^transmitted"  to  them  from 
other  and  more  civilized  nations.  The  psycho- 
logical reason  of  this  assumption  is  to  be  found 
in  modern  Antisemitism.  An  age,  as  ours,  that 
has  been  so  deeply  agitated  by  the  aspersions 
and  aggressions  of  "Antisemites,"  more  particu- 
larly in  Germany  and  France,  can  not  psycho- 
logically persuade  itself  that  a  sublime  perennial 
idea,  such  as  pure  Monotheism,  is  derived  from 
a  people  now  so  much  looked  down  upon.  On 
the  contrary,  all  its  anti-Semitic  instincts  lead 
it  to  believe  that  the  forefathers  of  the  modern 
Jews  were  just  as  low  and  contemptible  a  peo- 
ple as  are,  from  the  anti-Semitic  standpoint,  the 
modem  Hebrews,  And  since  no  one  amongst 
the  German  or  French  anti-Semites  so  much  as 
doubts  the  reality  of  "race;"  and  since  they 
take  it  for  granted  that  the  modem  Jews  (the 
most  mixed  people,  genealogically  speaking,  of 
all)  are  still  the  unadulterated  descendants  of 
the  ancient  Hebrews, — the  anti-Semites  can  not 
and  will  not  admit  that  the  greatest  spiritual 
force  of  all  ages  was  introduced  by  Jews.  In 
discarding  the  belief  of  the  Hebrew  origin  of 
ethical  Monotheism,  Higher  Critics  are  thus  the 
victims  both  of  a  thoroughly  vitiated  method,  as 
shown  before,  and  of  one  of  the  strongest  social 
prejudices  of  modern  times. 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  187 

It  is  here  out  of  place  to  discuss  anti-Semit- 
ism. The  author  has  done  that  elsewhere.  It  is 
sufficient  to  have  indicated  its  workings  in  the 
subterranean  cavities  of  "Higher"  Biblical 
Criticism.  What  we  are  bound  to  consider  here 
with  great  care  is  the  question  whether  such  a 
thing  as  Hebrew  Monotheism  of  the  eighth  cen- 
tury B,  C,  as  revealed  in  Amos  and  Hosea,  can 
be  given,  or  borrowed,  or  transmitted. 

To  this,  there  is  a  simple  and  categoric 
answer :  !No ;  absolutely  not.  A  national  be- 
lief, such  as  ethical  Monotheism,  can  neither  be 
simply  given  to,  nor  taken  by,  a  nation.  It 
must  grow  out  of  that  nation ;  it  must  be  so  wel- 
come to  other  and  vital  institutions  of  that  na- 
tion that,  even  if  that  nation  should  not  have 
positively  originated  it,  it  must  have  met  it 
half  way.  For  ethical  Monotheism  is  not  one 
thing.  The  bookworm,  indeed,  readily  imagines 
that  Monotheism  consists  in  the  arithmetical 
statement  that  there  is  only  one  God,  and  not 
two  gods,  or  two  and  a  half.  This  statement  of 
the  Oneness  of  God  is,  however,  not  the  be-all 
and  end-all  of  Monotheism.  It  is  its  husk ;  not 
its  essence.  Monotheism,  like  all  fundamental 
attitudes  of  the  human  mind,  is  a  system  of  a 
great  many  mental,  spiritual,  and  social  correla- 
tions. It  is  a  vast  fabric  of  religious  and  eth- 
ical forces  and  attitudes.     To  have  a  firm  and 


188  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

powerful  notion  of,  and  belief  in,  Monotheism, 
a  nation  must  have  a  national  morality  attuned 
to  the  ethics  of  the  Monotheistic  idea.  He  alone 
is  a  true  Monotheist  who  feels  in  him,  as  a  liv- 
ing force,  the  uncompromising  belief  that  as 
the  world  is  to  the  One  Living  God,  so  is  his 
whole  life  to  the  One  Living  Ethical  Force  in 
him,  beyond  which  there  can  be  no  real  solace 
nor  any  real  happiness.  Monotheism  is,  as  it 
were,  twofold  while  being  all  one:  first,  cosmic 
Monotheism,  or  the  relation  of  the  One  God  to 
the  world;  and  then,  ethical  Monotheism,  or 
the  relation  of  man's  actions  to  the  One  Law  of 
Morality.  These  two  integral  factors  of  Mono- 
theism can  not  be  severed,  and  it  was  for  their 
extension  to  all  humanity,  and  not  only  to  a 
small  nation,  that  the  coming  of  the  Savior  was 
as  necessary  for  all  men  as  that  of  Moses  had 
been  for  the  Israelites. 

Traders,  agents,  books  may  very  well  "give" 
to  a  nation  the  bald  statement  that  there  is  only 
One  God.  But  can  they  also  give  to  that  nation 
the  whole  mental  and  moral  attitude  without 
which  the  mere  acceptance  of  the  numerical  one- 
ness of  the  Godhead  is  void  and  stale  ?  Can  any 
single  man,  teacher,  lecturer,  preacher,  trader, 
or  agent  give  such  an  attitude  to  a  nation  ?  Has 
he  ever  done  so?  A  rich  man  can  found  col- 
leges and  libraries ;  can  he  also  give  his  nation 


Prophets  cmd  Theory  of  Personality.  189 

the  gift  of  scientific  thought?  Managers  can 
bring  to  their  country  all  the  great  musicians, 
singers,  pianists,  conductors,  violinists,  and 
'cellists  in  the  world ;  can  they  give  their  nation 
the  gift  of  music  ?  Multi-millionaires  can  found 
and  establish  vast  museums ;  can  they  give  their 
nation  the  gift  of  art  ?  Have  they  ever  done  so  ? 
The  most  precious  of  our  accomplishments, 
the  greatest  of  our  pleasures  or  treasures,  are 
not  matters  of  gift.  They  do  not  simply  come  to 
us.  The  average  man,  it  is  true,  v^hen  he  sees 
a  great  work  of  art,  thinks  he  has  learnt  enough 
about  it  when  he  knows  that  it  was  made  by 
the  artist  X.,  and  given  to  the  nation  Y.  It 
never  occurs  to  the  average  man,  that  no  single 
artist,  as  an  individual,  can  be  taken  as  the 
final  and  real  cause  of  the  art-work.  No  nation 
ever  had  a  great  artist  unless  the  nation  itself 
was  great.  When  we  contemplate  a  fair  recon- 
struction of  the  Parthenon  we  ought,  in  the 
first  place,  not  to  think  of  Ictinus  and  Phidias, 
who  directed  the  building  of  this  most  marvelous 
of  all  works  of  architecture.  We  ought  to  think 
of  the  Athenians,  of  the  Greeks.  We  ought  to 
say  to  ourselves.  What  a  nation!  What  must 
they  not  have  suffered;  what  mortal  anguish, 
what  terrible  trials,  and  what  magnificent 
triumphs  must  they  not  have  gone  through,  be- 


190  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

fore  their  hearts  and  minds  were  quickened 
into  the  maturity  of  insight,  artistic  power,  and 
moderation  that  enabled  them  to  make  the  Par- 
thenon !  Forsooth,  it  must  have  taken  heaven 
and  hell  to  build  the  incomparable  abode  of  the 
Athenian  Virgin  Goddess.  Had  the  Athenians 
suffered  less,  had  they  triumphed  over  lesser 
enemies,  no  Phidias  could  have  sculptured  the 
birth  of  Athena,  and  no  Ictinus  could  have  been 
found  to  indicate  the  noble  lines  of  tlie  Par- 
thenon. The  father  of  Phidias  was  Themis- 
tocles ;  or,  rather,  both  were  sons  of  that  Athens 
that  destroyed  the  Persian  might  at  Marathon 
and  Salamis,  and  that  triumphed  over  brute  Na- 
ture in  the  friezes  and  metopes  of  the  Great 
Temple. 

If  this  be,  as  it  undoubtedly  is,  the  case  with 
art,  how  very  much  stronger  become  all  these 
arguments  when  applied  to  religion !  The  Par- 
thenon requires,  as  its  indispensable  antecedent, 
a  long  series  of  national  tragedies  and  triumphs ; 
and  the  sublime  idea  of  ethical  Monotheism 
should  require  as  its  antecedent  nothing  else 
than  a  few  trading  Babylonians  ?  Even  art 
smaller  than  that  of  the  Greeks  can  not  arise, 
and  has  never  arisen,  without  an  atmosphere 
of  mental  and  social  agitation,  such  as  common- 
place nations  can  never  hope  to  enjoy;  and  the 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  191 

rise  of  Monotheism  in  Israel  was  preceded  by 
events  no  more  exciting  than  the  opening  of  a 
fair  or  the  reading  of  a  few  clay-tablets  ?  ISTo 
sane  person  will  believe  that.  No  student  of 
history  will  hesitate  to  say  that  great  events 
must  have  had  great  causes.  It  has  been  re- 
served for  the  Higher  Critics  to  imagine  the 
rise  of  one  of  the  greatest  phenomena  of  history 
in  the  way  in  which  Mark  Twain  relates  the  dis- 
covery of  America  to  children.  "Are  you  Mr. 
Columbus  ?"  said  the  natives  to  the  great 
Genoese  on  his  landing  on  their  island.  "Yes," 
said  Columbus ;  "and  are  you  the  Americans  ?" 
"Yes,"  said  the  natives;  and  then  looking  at 
one  another,  they  exclaimed,  "We  are  discov- 
ered!" 

Did  the  discovery  of  America  happen  in  this 
fashion  ?  Were  not  Titanic  struggles  required 
for  its  consummation  ?  When  the  secular  at- 
tempts of  the  Turks  had  finally,  in  14:53,  led 
to  their  conquest  of  Constantinople ;  when  the 
Turks  had  made  themselves  masters  of  the  Near 
East, — then,  and  only  then,  the  Western  Chris- 
tian nations,  and  chiefly  the  great  trading  Re- 
publics in  Italy,  being  thwarted  in  their  Orien- 
tal trade  by  the  Turks,  were  forced  to  look  for 
a  trade-route  in  the  West,  over  the  Atlantic,  as 
for   their   sole    means    of   economic   salvation. 


192  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

Every  schoolboy  knows  that.  Every  schoolboy 
knows  that  America  could  not  have  been  dis- 
covered but  for  secular  and  tremendous,  or  as 
it  were,  "geological"  revolutions  and  crises  in 
Christian  Europe.  No  one  ignores  that  the 
discovery  of  America  by  the  Vikings,  being 
neither  preceded  by  nor  meant  to  allay  such 
crises,  was  speedily  rendered  null,  and  void, 
and  fruitless.  And  the  "discovery"  of  Mono- 
theism should  have  required  no  crises,  no  "geo- 
logical" upheavals,  no  stress  and  anguish,  no 
national  trials  and  triumphs  at  all  ? 

The  above  and  other  passages  in  Amos  and 
Hosea  alone  are  therefore  completely  sufficient 
to  establish  the  inevitable  connection  between 
Hebrew  Monotheism  and  the  Great  National 
Crisis  of  the  Israelites;  that  is,  the  Egyptian 
slavery  and  the  Exodus,  upon  which  both 
Prophets  repeatedly  insist.  Nothing  short  of 
such  a  national  crisis  could  have  rendered  the 
Israelites  capable  of  appreciating  and  observ- 
ing Monotheism.  We  said  of  Moses,  that  had 
he  not  done  what  he  did,  he  could  not  have 
taught  what  he  taught.  We  may  now  add  with 
tenfold  force,  had  the  Israelites  not  suffered  or 
triumphed  as  they  did,  they  could  not  have  ob- 
served Monotheism.  The  deed  is  the  father  of 
the  idea.     The  Bible,  in  confirming  this,  the 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  198 

most  certain  principle  of  ancient  classical  his- 
tory, or  the  history  of  the  "Semitic"  and  Hel- 
lenic border-nations,  has,  by  this  glorious  trait 
alone,  given  the  historian  the  grandest  proof  of 
its  holy  authenticity.  No  scribbling  "inter- 
polator" or  "redactor"  could  have  ever  thought 
of  this  parental  relation  of  Deed  and  Idea,  of 
Exodus  and  Monotheism.  A  scribbler  knows 
not  the  nature  of  deeds.  The  higher  critical 
scribes  of  our  times  have  not  known  it  either. 
For  them  an  idea  is  a  child  of  the  brain,  of  the 
proud  Intellect.  They  ignore,  that  the  aristo- 
crats among  ideas  are  all  deed-born,  because 
coming  from  the  heart.  They  ignore  that  ideas 
such  as  Monotheism  are  the  rainbow  visible  only 
after  tempests,  torrents  of  rain,  and  wild  storms. 
They  think  that  ideas  are  those  puny  things  that 
arise  when  one  learned  infinnity  embraces  the 
other  in  the  form  of  a  quotation.  They  think 
that  the  British  predilection  for  inductive  and 
cautious  thinking  comes  from  a  reading  of 
Bacon's  Novum  Organum,  Oxford  edition  in  8°. 
They  think — it  is  impossible  to  say  what  they 
think. 

For  persons  who  have  not  yet  lost  their  sense 

of  reality,  and  who  have  in  their  own  practical 

experience  long  found  the  true  relation  between 

national  ideas  and  national  deeds,  the  Bible  is 

13 


194   The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticzsm. 

the  Book  of  all  books,  especially  for  its  intense 
Reality.  It  breathes  the  rough,  ill-scanned,  and 
violent,  yet  bracing  and  soothing  atmosphere 
of  Reality  on  every  one  of  its  pages.  It  came 
from  Reality ;  it  has  all  its  luster  and  life ;  it 
communicates  it  to  every  one.  It  has  consoled 
so  many  hundreds  of  millions,  because  it  was 
written  by  souls  divinely  consoled  after  the 
most  tragic  national  destiny  had  crushed  them ; 
it  elevates  millions,  because  it  was  written  by 
men  who  had  been  divinely  elevated  from  the 
dust  of  national  contrition  and  self-contempt  to 
the  heights  of  serene  content;  it  has  been  be- 
lieved by  so  many  millions  and  millions  of  good 
and  strong  men  and  virtuous  women,  because  it 
was  born  out  of  the  strongest  belief  of  Man  in 
God,  of  Man  in  Man,  and  of  Man  in  Woman. 
Without  the  reality  of  those  tragic  destinies,  of 
those  consolations,  and  of  that  great  Belief,  the 
Bible  could  have  impressed  people  no  more  in- 
tensely than  did  the  insipid  yet  highly  rhetorical 
vaporings  of  the  Babylonia  priests.  When  a 
man  suffers,  he  is  full  of  the  reality  of  his  pain. 
J^othing  short  of  a  consoling  power  that  has 
known  similar,  nay,  greater  pain,  can  console 
him.  The  abiding  value  of  the  Bible  is  rooted 
in  the  abiding  value  of  Reality. 

We  remarked,  at  the  beginning  of  the  third 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  195 

chapter,  that  the  "Higher  Critic"  is  incapable 
of  feeling  the  force  of  the  powerful  arguments 
against  his  theory.  It  will  now  be  seen,  that 
his  inability  comes  from  his  ignorance  of  and 
callousness  to  Reality.  Whether  he  treats 
Greek,  Roman,  or  Hebrew  history,  he  is  alike 
unable  to  seize  those  driving  forces  of  Reality 
which  have  really  made  history.  What  he 
wants,  what  he  is  interested  in,  what  he  really 
means  to  do,  is  to  handle  words,  and  nothing  but 
words.  He  is  a  word-monger.  One  of  them, 
the  famous  Ranke,  used  to  say  that  what  we 
needed  in  history  was  to  know  "what,  after  all, 
had  really  been  going  on"  ("wie  es  denn  eigent- 
lich  geschehen  ist").  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
Ranke  and  all  his  disciples  only  cared  to  know 
what  had  been  said  about  what  had  been  going 
on,  by  contemporaries.  They  are  after  docu- 
ments, not  after  Causes ;  after  words,  not  after 
psychological  forces.  They  never  dare  to  cross- 
examine,  nor  to  Rontgenize  the  past  by  means 
of  a  knowledge  of  the  human  capital  and  its 
functions.  They  neglect  the  constant  Causes, 
such  as  geo-politics ;  that  is,  they  want  to  find 
the  formula  of  the  curves  of  history,  by  neg- 
lecting to  determine  the  abscissae.  They  mis- 
imderstand  the  principal  variable  cause.  Person- 
ality, and  so  they  misconstrue  the  ordinatas  of 


196    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

history,  too.  To  this  point,  as  to  one  touching 
the  immediate  subject  of  the  present  work  more 
directly,  we  must  now  turn  our  attention.  The 
more  particular  and  technical  reason  why 
"Higher  Critics"  attempt  to  destroy  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  Bible  is  their  incapacity  to  grasp 
the  meaning  and  power  of  Personality  in  His- 
tory. This  they  will  never  do ;  and  hence  no 
arguments  based  on  a  right  understanding  of 
Personality  can  avail  with  them.  "Higher 
Critics"  must  be  handled  by  means  of  an  in- 
strument much  rougher  than  is  the  theory  of 
Personality  in  History.  Nor  is  it  very  hard  to 
foretell  the  nature  of  this  instrument.  It  is, 
as  in  every  case,  the  same  old  story.  We  are 
punished  by  the  very  things  by  which  we  sinned. 
The  "Higher  Critics"  pride  themselves  on  be- 
ing honest  people,  who,  at  the  risk  of  being  per- 
secuted— poor  souls  ! — will  call  a  spade,  a  spade. 
N^ow,  this  is  precisely  the  instrument  that  will 
exterminate  them.  They  call,  they  say,  a  spade, 
a  spade.  Have  they  not  yet  learned  to  dread 
what  the  Spade  will  call  them  ?  The  spade,  now 
so  busy  in  Palestine,  will  undoubtedly,  and  in 
the  near  future,  unearth  a  copy  of  Genesis  in 
cuneiform  script,  dating  from  the  thirteenth  or 
twelfth  century  B.  C.  By  this  one  find,  all  the 
theories  of  the  "Higher  Critics,"  propounded 


Prophets  a/nd  Theory  of  Personality.  197 

in  thousands  of  elaborate  works,  will  vanish 
from  literary  existence  as  did  the  nightmare  of 
witch-trials  when  the  thunder  of  the  French 
Revolution  began  to  roar  over  the  heads  of  the 
absolutist  princes  and  their  obsequious  judges. 
A  copy  of  Genesis  or  Exodus  in  cuneiform 
script  is  the  lie  direct  to  all  the  theories  of  the 
"Higher  Critics"  about  the  post-Mosaic,  "Ex- 
ilic," or  post-Exile  origin ;  i.  e.,  fabrication  of 
the  Pentateuch.  The  lie  direct, — there  can  be 
no  doubt  about  that,  not  even  in  the  minds  of 
the  most  benighted  of  "Higher  Critics."  Is  it 
now  sufficiently  clear  which  name  the  honest 
Spade  will  give  to  the  "Higher  Critics"  who  so 
bravely  pose  as  "honest  brokers"  of  truth,  as 
men  who  "call  a  spade,  a  spade  ?" 

We  said,  that  as  geo-politics  are  the  principal 
amongst  the  constant  Causes  of  History,  so  Per- 
sonality is  amongst  the  variable  ones.  Person- 
ality has  its  history,  and  the  various  ages  of 
history  produce  different  types  of  Personality. 
The  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  A.  D.  pro- 
duced the  type  of  the  "Kingmaker," — of  War- 
wick, Zapolya,  the  Vasas,  the  Guises,  and,  a 
little  later  in  sluggish  Austria,  Wallenstein. 
The  seventeenth  century  produced  the  type  of 
great  ministers, — Sully,  Cardinals  Richelieu 
and  Mazarin,  Colbert;  and  in  Austria,  always 


198    The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

behindhand,  Kaunitz  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
The  nineteenth  century  produced  a  blend  of  the 
"Kingmaker"  and  the  great  minister,  in  that 
Bismarck^  Deak,  Cavour,  Lincoln  "united," 
not  dynasties,  but  their  nations. 

It  is,  however,  in  classical  antiquity  where 
personality,  being  of  a  type  very  much  superior 
to  all  the  modem  types  just  enumerated,  has 
played  its  greatest  role.  In  modem  times  there 
is  only  one  example  of  the  type  of  Hebrew, 
Greek,  or  Roman  political  Personalit}^ :  Napo- 
leon. He  is  essentially  antique.  It  was  re- 
served for  H.  Taine  to  see  in  Napoleon  a  Re- 
naissance type  of  Personality.  In  reality,  the 
incomparable  Corsican  was  of  the  stuff  of  which 
the  great  men  of  classical  antiquity  were  made. 
For  he,  too,  and  he  alone,  was  given  rise  to  by  a 
Titanic  struggle  such  as  the  classical  ancients 
had  had  in  plenty,  but  we  moderns  only  once, 
the  French  Revolution.  In  Palestine,  in  the 
Hellenic  countries,  in  Roman  Italy,  there  was 
more  than  one  immense  upheaval  and  strife  es- 
sentially identical  with  the  gigantic  event  called 
the  French  Revolution.  Accordingly,  in  Pales- 
tine, in  the  Hellenic  countries,  in  Roman  Italy, 
there  was  more  than  one  Napoleon.  Person- 
ality, in  those  ancient  countries,  developed  to  a 
grandeur,  to  an  importance,  to  a  power  of  vast 


Prophets  cmd  Theory  of  Personality.   199 

influence  over  the  destinies  of  nations,  such  as 
less  agitated  times  can  neither  produce  nor  read- 
ily comprehend.  ^N^obodj,  indeed,  doubts  that 
from  1800  to  1814  A.  D.  all  Europe,  l^oth  polit- 
ical and  social,  was  dominated,  made,  and  un- 
made by  one  great  Personality,  by  Napoleon. 
This  is  exactly  what  happened  repeatedly  to  the 
classical  nations  from  2000  B.  C.  to  200  A.  D. 
Being  agitated,  as  they  were,  by  revolutions 
and  wars  involving  the  same  structural  and 
fundamental  changes  as  were  those  of  the 
French  Revolution,  they,  too,  had  a  series  of 
political  and  spiritual  Napoleons,  whose  power 
over  their  destinies  can  be  denied  only  by  him 
who  will  seriously  undertake  to  prove  that  the 
history  of  Europe  from  1800  to  1814  A.  D. 
does  not  spell  Napoleon. 

This,  the  plainest  teaching  of  ancient  class- 
ical history,  is,  however,  the  very  statement,  the 
very  truth  that  nearly  all  modern  historians  and 
theologians,  particularly  in  Germany,  deride, 
neglect,  ignore.  We  said  above,  at  the  end  of 
the  second  chapter,  that  all  ancient  classical  his- 
tory is  cephalic.  It  comes  from  and  is  totally 
dominated  by  towering  Personalities  of  various 
kinds,  just  as  Europe  was  for  a  time  dominated, 
vitalized,  and  revolutionized  by  Napoleon.  We 
now  see  the  psychological  reason  why  classical 


200  The  Failure  of  the  Higher  Criticism. 

nations  were  necessarily  bound  to  be  more 
cephalic  than  are  modern  nations.  Theirs  was 
the  greater,  the  more  intense  struggle.  They 
had  many  a  "French  Revolution."  We  essayed 
to  show  that,  of  all  classical  nations,  the  border- 
nations  in  Western  Asia  had,  by  their  geo-polit- 
ical situation  in  historic  space,  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  'Trench  Revolutions,"  and  hence  the 
most  intense  need  of,  and  ability  to  produce, 
those  great  Personalities.  To  deny  these  Per- 
sonalities, is  to  deny  the  existence  both  of  those 
border-nations  and  of  the  geographical  configu- 
ration of  Western  Asia.  It  is  no  exaggeration 
to  say  that  he  who  denies  the  historic  existence 
of  Moses,  denies  the  Mediterranean,  the  Nile, 
and  the  Euphrates.  He  who  does  not  believe 
nor  see,  that  all  classical  history,  including,  in 
the  first  place,  that  of  the  ancient  Hebrews,  is 
and  necessarily  was  cephalic,  reads  the  whole 
of  classical  history  through  convex  glasses. 
Wliat  is  upright,  he  perceives  as  horizontal ; 
what  is  flat,  he  believes  to  be  of  three  dimen- 
sions. He  misunderstands  the  wars  of  the  an- 
cients, as  well  as  their  art;  their  religion,  as 
well  as  their  ethics ;  their  amusements,  as  well 
as  their  legislation.  He  perverts  all  history. 
He  distorts  it.  No  wonder,  one  of  those  ill- 
starrcnl  historians  of  antiquity,  for  whom  Moses 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.    201 

and  the  Exodus  are  in  the  "highest  degree" 
problematic ;  for  whom  Lycurgus  never  existed, 
and  Socrates'  demon,  a  farce, — no  wonder,  we 
say,  that  Professor  Eduard  Meyer,  of  Berlin, 
has  so  completely  lost  all  sense  of  proportion 
that  he  declares  Frederick  William  I  of  Prus- 
sia, the  grotesque  and  stupid  father  of  Fred- 
erick the  Great,  to  be  ''probably  the  most  im- 
portant figure  of  modem  times !"  Moses,  it 
will  be  seen,  is  according  to  this  voluminous  his- 
torian, and  "Higher  Critic,"  a  most  problematic 
thing;  and  Frederick  William  I  of  Prussia  is 
more  important  than  his  son,  than  Chatham, 
Mirabeau,  Napoleon,  or  Bismarck.  Really,  the 
German  professors  of  history  are  providen- 
tially reserved  for  the  maintenance  of  hilarity 
in  Olympus  and  on  earth. 

It  may  now  be  seen  why  we  said  that  one 
might  perhaps  deny  the  historical  existence  of 
the  ancient  Hebrews,  although  we  A.o  not  see  at 
all  how  that  could  be  done;  but  once  the  exist- 
ence of  that  nation  is  admitted,  to  deny  Moses, 
is  to  deny  "noon  at  twelve  o'clock,"  as  the 
French  say;  is  to  deny  the  existence  of  Napo- 
leon, after  having  admitted  the  existence  of  the 
French  Revolution.  Moses  is  psychologically 
as  integral  a  part  of  the  history  of  the  Israelites 
as  the  three  angles  of  a  triangle  are  logically  a 


202  The  Failure  of  ike  Higher  Criticism. 

part  of  that  geometric  figure.  In  saying  this, 
we  have  not  said  enough.  What  we  just  now 
said  about  Moses  applies  to  all  the  Personalities 
of  Hebrew  history  from  about  2000  B.  C.  to 
100  A.  D.  They  do  indeed  form  a  chain,  a  liv- 
ing chain  of  organs,  as  it  were,  linked  together 
by  the  same  Great  Life,  the  same  Great  Des- 
tiny. From  Abraham  to  Jesus  there  is  no  break, 
no  interruption.  The  Patriarchs,  the  Judges, 
the  Kings,  the  Prophets,  the  Savior,  the  Apos- 
tles,— they  are  all  and  one  the  ever-rising  Force 
that  necessarily  always  incarnates  itself  in  a 
great  and  eventually  in  a  transcendental  Per- 
sonality. Where  struggles  so  intense  and  as- 
pirations so  vast  are  the  rule,  there  Personality 
of  an  ever  greater  type  can  not  be  missing.  The 
"Higher  Critics,"  by  misconstruing  Personality, 
misconstrue  all  those  struggles,  all  those  aspira- 
tions. He  who  misinterprets  Abraham,  misre- 
ports  and  misunderstands  Jesus  of  Nazareth ; 
as,  on  a  minor  scale,  he  who  misconstrues  Ly- 
curgus,  misreports  and  misunderstands  Leon- 
idas,  Lysander,  Agesilaos,  and  Cleomenes  III; 
and  he  who  disbelieves  in  Romulus,  miscon- 
strues the  Scipios  and  the  Marcelli.  Just  as 
all  Athenian  history  gravitated  towards  its  cul- 
minating Personality,  Pericles ;  just  as  all  Car- 
thaginian history  gravitated  up  to  Hannibal, 


Prophets  and  Theory  of  Personality.  203 

and  all  Roman  history  to  Julius  Caesar:  even 
so,  on  a  plane  even  more  elevated,  and  more  sig- 
nificant, all  Hebrew  history  necessarily  culmi- 
nated, from  Personality  to  Personality,  in  Jesus. 
To  deny  Abraham,  is  to  deny  Jesus ;  is  to  deny 
the  plainest  facts  of  that  pre-eminently  cephalic 
history  that  is  the  foundation  and  life-giving 
Essence  of  Humanity.  Higher  Criticism  stands 
condemned  by  history  fully  as  much  as  by  true 
religion.  It  is  neither  true,  nor  helpful.  It  is 
the  distortion  of  historic  truth,  as  well  as  the 
desecration  of  true  religion. 


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